The Christie Curse (24 page)

“Was it a man? I couldn’t see him. I was sleeping, and then I woke up struggling to
breathe. Something was blocking my mouth and nose. It was horrible.”

I could imagine how horrible it must have been. With a soft squeak of shoes, a pair
of nurses entered the room. I said, “Karen, can you think of anyone who would want
to hurt you?”

Her eyes were wide. “No one.”

“Do you know who attacked you in Saint Sebastian’s?”

“The police officer asked me that. I don’t remember.”

“Well, two pieces of good news,” I said. “One, whoever it was failed again. And two,
your pooch is having a spa holiday.”

I wasn’t sure if that last one sunk in.

I found myself displaced quickly as a doctor arrived to check out Karen. I stared
suspiciously at everyone who went into the room, but this one appeared to be for real,
judging by the reaction of the other medical staff. Karen’s assailant had been dressed
as a physician. He’d have no trouble passing freely through the corridors of the hospital.
Even if there
were security cameras, what would they show? A doctor. Big deal. The place was crawling
with them.

The one thing I knew for sure: whoever was out to get Karen was really out to get
her. He’d taken a big chance making an attempt on her life in a busy hospital. The
worst part was that he’d almost succeeded.

I felt desperate to find out the doctor’s take on whether this latest attack had harmed
her in any way. The attempt to smother her could have been the last straw. But I got
nowhere with the medical staff.

I paced in the hallway wondering what to do about that while I waited a ridiculously
long time for the police to arrive. I finally decided to wait for them outside where
I could at least use my iPhone. I clicked on
Ashley
in my contact list and fidgeted while it rang. No answer. Damn. I really hoped she’d
get my message.

“Ashley, there’s been another attempt on Karen’s life at the hospital. Please take
care to keep yourself safe. Call the police if you see anything at all unusual. The
attacker was dressed as a doctor, so be vigilant and let me know that you got this
message.”

Ten minutes later a pair of police officers arrived in a cruiser, and for once I was
glad to see them. I identified myself and filled them in on what I’d witnessed. I
watched the female officer record it while the other one looked around. I had a quaver
in my voice when I said, “She needs a guard at her door. A police officer or at the
very least a security guard. Can you arrange it?”

She said, “Not up to us, but we will pass it along. Were you the only person to witness
this attempt?”

“The attempt itself, yes. But hospital staff saw the attacker fleeing. Check with
security too.”

“But we have just your word that this person attacked the patient. We’ll have to take
statements from the staff on the floor and any other witnesses. Wait here for Detective
Zinger.”

It didn’t take me long to pick up the subtext there. The world is full of whack jobs.
“Go ahead and get your statements. I’ll wait for you here.” I wasn’t hopeful. The
nurses had seen me run out of Karen’s room after I’d stopped the attempt to smother
her, but of course, I had no proof of what I’d witnessed.

As the cops moved toward the entrance, I called after them. “The guy ran. Why else
would he run if he wasn’t up to something?” As I was speaking, I saw a familiar figure
emerge from the parking lot, stop and stare at the police and at me. Eddie. That couldn’t
be a coincidence.

“Excuse me, but I need to talk to that man.”

The cops exchanged glances, and then one of them said, “Um, no. You’d better wait
here for Detective Zinger.”

I said, “But—”

The other one said, “We need you to wait here. Don’t leave the area.”

“But that’s…” What could I say? Eddie clearly looked nothing like the man I’d caught
trying to smother Karen. But he
was
here, at the hospital, and if he had just walked out now, wouldn’t he have been in
the building when the latest attempt on Karen’s life was happening?

I stayed put, though. These two officers obviously thought I was a loose cannon already.
And if I were in their large black boots, I wouldn’t have given me the time of day.
The question was, what would Agatha do? For sure, she’d have Hercule Poirot or possibly
the divine Miss M pursue the Eddie angle. Likely they wouldn’t place much stock in
police smarts.

It didn’t take long for the news of an attack to filter out. Soon a media van pulled
up, and a reporter who was eager to talk to anyone and everyone hopped out. The crowd
was growing larger, late visitors who’d decided to wait and be part of the drama,
staff on smoke breaks on the edge of the property, people in the neighborhood. Who
knows why crowds materialize so quickly?

Eddie was long gone well before Detective Zinger was finished putting me through the
wringer, rhyme not intended. A certain coincidence was bothering him.

“So let me see if I have this straight,” he said, stroking his granite chin and looking
through me with his weird X-ray eyes, after he got the bare-bones story. “You found
this Karen Smith after the first attack.”

“Yes.”

“You called it in.”

“Correct. You know that. You interviewed me.”

He held up his hand to silence me. “Then, you happened to go to her room in the hospital
and by a stroke of luck, foil another attempt on her life.”

“Exactly.”

“You don’t find that a bit weird?”

“Of course it’s weird. Everything that’s going on is bizarre and horrible. But Karen
must know something so damaging that someone is willing to kill her to prevent her
from talking.”

“Talking to whom? About what?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure the person who is trying to kill her believes she knows who
he is. I find that interesting, don’t you, Detective?”

After a few more desultory questions, including my name, address and telephone number,
yet again, he uttered the usual cliché: “Don’t leave town.”

“I don’t live in Grandville, as you know,” I said. “You can find me in Harrison Falls.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Have you put someone in place to make sure Karen Smith is not attacked again?”

He squinted at me.

I said, “Two attempts on her life. We don’t want the third one to be the charm. I
mentioned it to the other officers.”

He moved off and spoke into his cell phone. It was not
my business apparently, although I had raised the warning flag. I waited.

“The hospital administration will place a security guard at her door for the next
while. You can rest easy.”

“How long?”

“Hard to say, but they won’t let anything happen to her.”

Oh sure, I thought. Isn’t that what they always say just before the next person dies?
Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you. You’re safe with us.

Before I could make this comment, I spotted another familiar face in the crowd still
milling around the front of the hospital.

Well, well. If it wasn’t Officer Smiley. In civvies, this time. How long had he been
there? That was the question. Like Eddie, he didn’t hang around to chat.

*    *    *

EIGHT O’CLOCK WAS looming, and I was conscious that I would barely make it to dinner
in time. I squealed into the driveway at the Van Alst house, raced along the endless
hallway and took the stairs two at a time. I managed to change into my standby silk
shift and hop into a pair of heels. I grabbed my mother’s pearls, the always necessary
cardigan, and I even stopped long enough in front of the mirror to slap on a bit of
lip gloss. The baseball cap hadn’t done me any favors, and I had to do something about
that, although I was out of time. On the way down the stairs, I managed to walk very
fast and twist it into a makeshift updo. I hoped I resembled something human. No time
to check.

In the hallway, I was almost knocked over by the same large, ungainly woman I’d seen
a few days earlier. She stared at me in alarm and seemed to bolt through the door
and off toward the parking area. “Excuse me” would have been good. My family might
be crooks, but they had managed to teach me manners.

Although she’d barely arrived ahead of me, Vera Van Alst still glowered from the end
of the long table and made a big show of checking her watch.

“Eight on the nose,” I breathed as Signora Panetone exploded through the swinging
door, bearing a platter with a mountain of gnocchi.

“Eat!”

I was all for it. This chasing around after shadowy crooks and pillow-wielding thugs
might not have yielded any answers, but it did make a girl hungry.

“Sure thing,” I said as she swooped by and loaded up my plate with feather-light gnocchi
in a delicate tomato sauce topped by generous heapings of freshly grated Romano and
Parmesan.

“I missed you this morning,” I said to Vera. “I hope you are feeling better.”

I guessed the grunt meant something: yes or no or kiss my foot. I sampled the gnocchi
before I sprung my surprises.

As Vera stared at the tiny bit of food on her plate, occasionally pushing a gnocchi
with her Francis I fork, I said, “A couple of interesting developments.”

Vera raised an eyebrow.

I had her attention. “Someone tried to kill Karen Smith today.”

That earned me a frown.

“Right in the hospital.”

Vera pursed her lips.

The signora stopped swooping, put down the platter and crossed herself.

“Whoever did that is dangerous.”

Vera stared off at the sideboard where a cat was poised to spring. Damn. I had forgotten
my boots.

“And perhaps not only dangerous to Karen Smith. I think he believes she knows who
he is. Maybe he thinks you know something too.”

“Me?” Vera scowled. “What could I know about him?”

“You tell me. But for the record, last night I saw a dark figure skulking around the
house.”

“Skulking?” Vera snorted. “Is this fiction? Don’t be ridiculous.”

I shrugged. “Have it your own way. But I know what I saw. A large man was skulking
near the side door.”

“As you know, Miss Bingham, we have first-rate security here at the Van Alst house.
I do not fear intruders.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. The security’s pretty good at the hospital too. But someone
tried to smother her with her pillow.”

“I believe that if someone only
attempted
to kill Karen Smith, the security must be more than adequate.”

“Wrong. I interrupted the attempt and the attacker ran off. The staff saw nothing
and wouldn’t have been able to prevent it.”

The scowl returned.

“You should take me seriously. Is there something you know about what happened to
Karen Smith or Alex Fine? If so, you’d better tell me, because this guy is playing
for keeps and you are definitely involved somehow.”

I thought I heard the signora mutter, “Madonna!”

Vera merely stared at the table

“By the way,” I said loudly, “I noticed Eddie was at the hospital too. Coincidence?”

The signora snatched up the platter and vanished through the swinging door into the
kitchen, nicking the frame of the door as she went. I guessed I’d hit a nerve.

There was no dessert for me that night.

*    *    *

AFTER DINNER, I continued to worry. How safe was Karen Smith? How dangerous was this
person? I figured two attempts at murder meant he was very dangerous indeed.

How competent would hospital security guards be to deal
with a determined killer? It seemed outside of the normal scope of hospital work.
Would they leave the door unguarded for a bathroom break? Could they be fooled by
the right person dressed like a resident or a surgeon? This was a hospital in a gentle
and civilized community. What were the chances they would be equal to the task?

Then there were the Grandville police. They’d be used to bar fights, stolen vehicles,
domestic disturbances, small-potatoes robberies and speeders, plus a range of drug
investigations and charges. But this level of violence with no apparent motive? I
wasn’t convinced they could solve the case, and more to the point, I didn’t really
trust them to protect Karen Smith. The fact that Officer Smiley was one of their number,
even though from the next town, had something to do with that. No question.

Karen Smith seemed to be the key to what was going on. Perhaps in time, she would
be able to identify her own attacker, who would most likely be the same person who’d
injured Ashley. I was pretty sure that the attacks were connected somehow to Alex
Fine, the secretive Merlin and the mystery of the Christie play.

So, what to do? I figured I would have one unlikely ally in this game of wits with
the killer, and I needed to see her now. Seconds later I was knocking firmly and purposefully
on the door to Vera’s suite, in her personal wing on the second floor, having managed
not to injure myself stumbling through the dark hallways, and then surviving the clanking
elevator.

I didn’t intend to alarm her, so I announced myself at the same time. “It’s Jordan.
I urgently need to talk to you.”

She opened the door and glared up at me from her wheelchair. She was still in her
day clothes, the same shades of pale mud that she’d worn at dinner a short time earlier.
A copy of Christie’s
Sad Cypress
lay on her lap. Perhaps she’d actually been reading it, or more likely stroking it.

She said, “You’d better have a good reason for disturbing me in my private quarters,
Miss Bingham.”

“I need your assistance to ensure that Karen Smith is not murdered. We want to avoid
the ‘third time’s a charm’ principle. She’s the key to this and you can help.”

“But what can I do?” For once, she seemed genuinely astonished.

“I understand you are a major donor to the Grandville hospital.”

“This couldn’t wait until morning? I do support the hospital, for reasons of my own.”

“You have clout with the hospital administration.”