The voice came from a long, long way off. “Niiick,” the voice said. “Can… you… hear me… Nick?” So faint, so far away, it might have been disembodied, celestial even.
I attempted to speak, but could only utter a strangled croak, an unearthly, subhuman sound. My eyes were still tightly closed; I struggled to open the lids.
Then the sense of touch came back, and by groping around with my hands, I could tell that I was lying on a bed, that my head was on a pillow.
At last my eyes came open, and I saw, looming over me, a figure in white, eyes behind gleaming lenses, blinking at me. Again I opened my mouth to speak, but the same gurgling aggh! was all I could manage. It was then I realized that I could not speak because there was a tube of some kind stuck down my throat, choking me, blocking my vocal cords. For a moment I thought I was going to vomit, but the nausea passed and left me limp, sweating from what seemed to be every pore in my body.
“Mr. Barlow,” said a voice, not the one I had heard at first, “you must not try to talk just now.” The voice was calm, measured, soothing. It belonged to the figure in white with the glittering eyeglasses. A doctor, I thought, and with a bedside manner at that. Which meant that I—
“You’re in a hospital,” said the doctor, still hovering over me.
Which one? I wondered.
“Doctors.”
Reassuring—a hospital full of doctors, of all things.
“We’ll be taking that drain in your stomach out shortly, and then you’ll be able to talk.”
Thank God. Nick Barlow unable to talk is Nick Barlow disarmed.
It was something like an hour later when the drain was finally removed, and I was able to sit up. Shortly after that, I was assisted out of bed, seated in front of a table of some kind, and fed what tasted like mashed potatoes and creamed corn, although neither dish would ever pass muster even at a truck stop. Nevertheless, I ate greedily. Not only was I ravenous, but I was so relieved to be alive that I would have gobbled down anything at all.
Once again, I was assisted back into bed, by a nurse on one side and Joe Scanlon on the other.
“Joe,” I said, “I’m glad you’re here. I think I was poisoned.”
He nodded. “You certainly were.”
“But Susan,” I said, sitting bolt upright in bed. “How is she, Joe? Tell me.”
“She didn’t make it,” he said in the flat, unaccented way with which he probably delivered that sort of bad news to more than one survivor of a tragedy. “DOA, Nick.”
“Oh no! Goddamn it, why? Why her, for God’s sake?”
“I’m sorry, Nick, believe me,” Scanlon said. “I gather she meant something to you.”
“That, yes, and the damned unfairness of it. She was just too young, Joe.”
Scanlon hunched his shoulders and sighed. Too many deaths, I thought. He’s seen so many, and every last one of them probably unfair. And what is too young, anyhow?
“That’s not all of it, Nick,” he said. “There’s more, I’m sorry to say.”
“More what?”
“The police think you did it. That you poisoned the wine, Nick.”
“But why in hell would I do that?”
“They’ll do their best to figure that out.”
Of course. It made perfect sense. If I had wanted to poison the wine, I’d have given a full glass to Susan, confident that she’d drink it, and only sip from my glass. Just enough to make me sick, not enough to kill me—but more than enough, probably, to kill her. Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch…
I told Scanlon about the cork of the wine bottle.
“Hatcher and Falco will be paying you a visit shortly, Nick. Be sure to tell them about the cork. I beat them here only by posing as the investigating officer. I told the medics this was a homicide matter, and I’d have to question you as soon as you were conscious.”
“But how did you find out I was here?”
He coughed and turned a light shade of red. “You were, shall I say, not dressed in your usual style, but there was a pocket diary in your jacket. Margo Richmond was listed as the one to call in an emergency. The ERS guys called her, and she called me. I hightailed over here as soon as I could.”
“I’m certainly glad of that, Joe.”
“And I suspect Margo will be here soon, too, Nick.”
I leaned back, suddenly aware that my eyes were full of tears. Was I crying for Susan’s death? Gratitude to be alive? To have friends like Margo… like Joe Scanlon? All of the above, probably. Thank you, Your Ineluctableness, whoever and whatever you are…
After Scanlon had left, I slid into a dreary torpor, an immense lassitude that ultimately deepened into sleep. I don’t know how long my nap lasted, but when I awoke in due course, Lieutenant Hatcher and Sergeant Falco were seated on either side of my bed.
“Do you feel up to answering a few questions, Mr. Barlow?” asked Hatcher.
“Sure,” I said. “Fire away.”
“Just tell us everything that happened, exactly as it happened.”
Falco took out his faithful notebook and a stub of a pencil, which he gripped tightly in his left hand, poised for action.
After I had finished my recital, Hatcher was silent for a moment; leaning back in his chair, he stroked his chin and said: “You’re sure about the punctures in the cork?”
“Positive.”
“We’ll send someone around to check on that. One other thing: the victim did not tell you who had sent the bottle of wine to her?”
“She didn’t know who it was. The card was just signed, ‘a grateful author.’
“Did you see the card?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Addressing Falco, Hatcher said: “We’ll look for the card, too. Meanwhile—”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t plan on leaving town for a few days.”
“I was thinking of going to Connecticut for the weekend. Once I get out of here, that is.”
“Don’t even go to Connecticut, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, but my tone was anything but gracious. I have never liked being told where I may or may not go. Some bloody nerve.
Hatcher and Falco slipped out as quietly as they had come. A nurse appeared in their wake and asked if I needed anything. “Juice?” she suggested, and when I shook my head, “Ice water?”
“Ice water would be fine, thank you.”
It was not the nurse, however, who brought the glass of ice water to me, it was Margo. She was a welcome sight, raven-black hair, jet-green eyes, and all.
“My ministering angel,” I murmured.
Margo laughed, showing her tiny white teeth. “Not quite,” she said. “When I was a little girl, though, I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“Same reason you didn’t become a doctor or a lawyer or an arctic explorer, I suppose. What might have been.”
“Instead you became Mrs. Nicholas Barlow.”
“Not at all, Nick. I became Margo Richmond Barlow.”
“You know, Margo, if we’d stayed married—” She put her finger to my lips.
“No, don’t say it.”
“I was merely going to remark that if we’d stayed married, I’d have gotten into a lot less trouble.”
She smiled, and I felt the blood rising to my face, for hers was a smile that never ceased to bring me pleasure.
“You have been misbehaving, haven’t you?” she said.
I winced, but managed a weak, rather crestfallen smile of my own.
“The doctor said you were lucky to be alive, that if you had drunk much more of that poisoned wine, you probably wouldn’t have survived. Even so, it was close, and they pumped your stomach out just in time.”
“What was in that wine, anyhow?” I asked.
“Potassium chlorate, probably. At least that’s what the doctor suspects it was.”
“How long will I be here, Margo, did he tell you that?”
“You ought to be discharged tomorrow, but, darling—”
How sweet that word sounded in my ears. Did it mean that I was back in Margo’s favor again? Perhaps not, but it did give me hope…
“—I’m going to be here to take you home,” she continued. “What’s more, I’m going to stay with you in the house for a few days—at least until you feel completely well. Is that understood?”
I muttered something like “I’m no invalid,” but there was obviously no conviction in my voice. In fact, the conversation had altogether exhausted me. I slumped down in bed and closed my eyes.
“When you feel up to it, darling, I want you to call your man Oscar and tell him and Pepita to get the spare room ready for me. Nick?… Nick?” And on that faint, rising note, Margo’s voice faded away as darkness closed in again.