If it wasn’t for the pungent odour, Alicia would have sworn the hotel manager was doing just as Lynette had suggested and sneaking in an afternoon nap. She almost hadn’t knocked on the door marked Manager, almost hadn’t opened it and, worse still, had almost turned away when she realised this wasn’t Vale’s office they were invading, or even his living area. It was his bedroom, and he was still tucked up under the covers.
Mortified, she went to shoo Simon out when that smell smashed through her subconscious. She turned around and took a second look, noticing a puddle of something disgusting by his head. Had he come down with food poisoning?
Walking slowly across the room, Alicia called out, “Vale? Are you okay?”
She approached the bed and reached down, still thinking at this stage how embarrassed he would be when she woke him. But of course Vale was not okay, and before she knew what she was doing, Alicia was jumping back and screaming at the top of her lungs. In retrospect, it wasn’t the smell that had startled her, or even his deathly features. It was Vale’s body—as cold and stiff as an ice block.
Within seconds, Simon was pulling Alicia away and reaching down to take the man’s pulse. Seconds later he looked back at her, head shaking.
“He’s dead,” he said, his voice flat, his eyes disbelieving.
“What’s going on?” came Perry from the doorway, followed immediately by Claire.
Then they all looked to Simon, who was now covering Vale’s face with his bedsheet. He shook his head firmly and stepped back towards the bedroom door. “I’m sorry to say, but our hotel manager has passed away.”
Claire flung a hand to her lips. “Goodness me! Oh how terrible!”
“Alicia!” cried Lynette, racing up the staircase. “What’s all the commotion? Are you all right?”
She nodded. “But Vale’s not.” Then, noticing them all crowd in, she said, “I think we should keep our distance, folks.”
Alicia wasn’t sure there was cause for suspicion, but she had seen enough corpses in the past few years to know that you needed to keep pawing hands away.
“Good idea,” said Perry, who was also scarily familiar with crime scenes. “Let’s preserve any evidence.”
“Evidence? What are you talking about?” said Blake, who was just behind Lynette. He peered past the group and stared at the figure on the bed. “Jesus, is that Vale under there?”
Simon ignored that. “Let’s not jump to any rash conclusions, Perry. The man most likely died in his sleep.”
“What of?” demanded Ronnie, who was coming up the rear, Flo beside her. “He seemed perfectly fine last night.”
“Old age?” suggested Blake, earning himself a scowl from the older woman.
“Could’ve been bitten by a snake,” said Flo, and Alicia was now nodding.
That was a very good suggestion! The vomit on his pillow indicated that something was not right. For the first time since Anders had left, she wished he was amongst them. The dashing doctor could be an annoying voice of caution, but he was also very useful, especially at times like these.
As it turned out, Ronnie proved useful too.
“Step aside,” she said crisply as she bustled her way through. “I used to be a nurse back in the dark ages. I’ll check his body for bite marks.”
“And I’ll see if I can find Mrs Flannery,” said Flo.
“Don’t bother,” said Perry. “She’s gone into town.”
“Well, I’m going to call the police,” said Simon, and Alicia nodded vigorously.
That was the best suggestion yet! Let’s bring in the professionals and hand this one straight over.
~
As Ronnie began to inspect Vale’s body, the rest of the group returned downstairs, some to the library to get the kettle boiling. After that shock, they could all do with a cuppa, although Flo insisted they would need something stronger and headed into the bar to “have a little fossick.”
In the lobby, Simon scooped up the main phone and began tapping in three zeroes. As he did so, Alicia and Perry held the front door open and scanned the steep driveway, desperately searching for signs of Mrs Flannery.
Why wasn’t she back yet?
It was now midafternoon, and the cook would have to start preparations for dinner soon, surely? Not that anyone would feel hungry tonight.
“It’s not working,” Simon called out, holding the phone towards them.
Alicia glanced back. “Of course it’s working. It’s been ringing hot all morning.”
“You probably just have to find an open line,” said Flo, a bottle of brandy in one hand. “Ronnie might have been a nurse as a wee lass, but I was a receptionist before I got hitched. I’ll get us sorted.”
She dropped the spirits on the desk and snatched the receiver from Simon, then began pressing buttons and clicking it on and off. Then she, too, held the phone out, frowning. “He’s right, I’m afraid. Landline’s disconnected.”
“How is that even possible?” said Alicia. “It was ringing so much my head was hurting!”
“Yes, but then it stopped, remember?” said Simon.
Alicia stared at him, blinking. He’s right. She had been so relieved when it finally went quiet, but now… She took the phone from Flo and then glared at the dead dial tone.
“Do you think someone’s cut it?” she asked, and now Flo was doing the glaring.
“Don’t be so melodramatic, love. Phone lines go down all the time in the country. Back in Gulargambone we lost it every other week. The power too if we weren’t lucky.”
And now they were all looking at the overhead light as Lynette and Blake wandered in, cups in hand, from the library.
“What now?” Lynette asked, tracing their eyes to the ceiling.
“Phone lines are down,” Alicia told her. “We can’t call out.”
“That’s a bummer. How about the internet? Maybe we can call via Skype or something?”
Lynette stepped behind the reception desk and clicked the computer to life, hand still holding her cup as she began tapping at the keyboard. Then she too was looking at them all blankly.
“No internet connection either. I wonder if that was also cut.”
“It’s probably ADSL and comes in through the phone line,” said Blake. “Pity they haven’t got decent satellite broadband.”
Simon was staring at the younger man strangely. “How do you know so much about this place?”
Blake shrugged. “I know how internet cable works. It’s not rocket science, old boomer.” He sniggered.
“In the meantime,” said Alicia, “what do we do with poor Mr Vale?”
“Nothing,” said Ronnie from the top of the stairs. “No one is to touch a thing.”
“What’s going on?” said Alicia.
“Did you find bite marks?” asked Flo.
Ronnie shook her head. “I found one mark, but I don’t think it’s a bite. Alicia, will you come and take a look for me?”
Alicia nodded and raced up the stairs while the others swapped worried glances.
~
Up in the bedroom, Alicia was trying hard not to inhale as she inspected Vale’s left arm below where his short-sleeved pyjama shirt ended. Ronnie was right. There was just one clear bluish-red dot with swelling all around it, the skin puffy and inflamed.
“If he had been bitten by a snake, he would have two puncture wounds from the animal’s fangs, not one. I think it’s an injection mark,” Ronnie told her. “And it was done fairly recently.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve given plenty of injections in my time, dear. I know an injection mark when I see one.”
“You think he’s a drug addict or… maybe a diabetic?”
Ronnie cocked her head sideways. “I can’t see any other signs of drug usage. No, I think this was a one-off.”
“Suicide?” Alicia suggested hopefully, and now Ronnie was giving her a sympathetic look.
“Did he seem suicidal to you? Besides, where is the needle? I can’t see any paraphernalia, which makes me think it was not self-inflicted.”
Alicia surveyed the immediate vicinity. Apart from the inflamed skin and the puddle of vomit, there was nothing else suspicious. Nothing on his bedside table or under his sheets or on the floor below his bed. She noticed a small en suite bathroom and stepped across, checking around the sink and in the plastic bin below it.
“I’ve inspected the cabinet,” Ronnie called out. “Apart from some multivitamins and cough syrup, I can’t find anything even remotely suspicious amongst his toiletries, nothing to indicate a preexisting condition. No vials of anything nasty.”
“So, let me see if I can catch up,” Alicia said, returning to the bedroom. “Vale has an injection mark but no obvious signs of how he could have been injected. Maybe… I don’t know… Mrs Flannery gave him a shot of something down in the kitchen—maybe it’s a regular thing—and then he came up here and had a bad reaction to it.”
Ronnie did not look too impressed with Alicia’s theory.
“How about this then: Maybe it’s completely unrelated. A red herring, so to speak. For all we know, Vale could have had a heart condition or cancer or a sudden stroke and just passed away in his sleep—irrelevant to that injection.”
“And yet, as I said, there’s no heart medication or the like anywhere, dear. Nothing to indicate a chronic condition that might bring on immediate death. I don’t think he was more than seventy, a bit young to just die in your sleep.”
Alicia nodded and stared down at the man again, a hand now covering her nose and mouth.
“He released his bowels,” Ronnie told her matter-of-factly, and Alicia stepped back involuntarily.
She did not know how anyone could be a nurse, let alone a forensic doctor. She took her hat off to the lot of them. “So… so what do you think it all means, Ronnie? What’s your gut feeling?”
The older woman stared down at Vale with a frown. “I don’t know for sure, of course, and a postmortem will be required…” She looked back at Alicia. “I can see this has upset you, dear, but I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“What?”
“I have a terrible suspicion our hotel manager has been poisoned.”