The Corpse with the Silver Tongue (2 page)

“I've been presenting a paper on the psychology of internet fraud to an international symposium here. I'm a criminologist now.” I must have sounded as though I was apologizing—which was annoying, because presenting a paper at an international symposium is a Big Deal.

“How jolly nice. Jolly nice,” had been his irritatingly patronizing reply. I'd felt my shoulders hunch with annoyance and I slurped at my rosé wine, which no longer seemed refreshing but necessary.

“Will you be with us for long?” Alistair seemed to imply that my visit to Nice was all about him. Again, typical.

“I leave on Tuesday,” I said before I could stop myself.

“Ah, so you'll have the whole weekend with us . . . Marvellous! Marvellous.”

Not if I can help it,
I thought.

“Oh
sweet, sweet
Cait,” he cooed, as he insinuated his flabby body, uninvited, into the chair next to mine. “You were
always
one of my most
valued
employees,
most
valued,” he'd lied. “I was bereft when you departed for pastures new—I could never imagine
why
 . . . And then there was all that
terrible
trouble you had in Cambridge . . . Oh dear me, yes, Cambridge . . .”

There it was!
That
was why he remembered me. He couldn't remember a thing about all the hours I'd put in for our clients, all the boring press stories I'd written, all the successful campaigns I'd managed . . . all the money I'd made for him. Oh no, if my face hadn't been plastered on the front page of every British tabloid, accused of “viciously slaying” my boyfriend, he'd never have remembered me at all. Of course, I'd been
completely
cleared. I was never even charged. But I wondered if he remembered that, or if he only recalled the lurid mud-slinging that the journalists had seemed to think was “investigative reporting.”

He rattled on. “You simply
must
come to my lovely wife's birthday party this evening. We're at the Palais du Belle France in Cimiez. I'll be serving my
very own
escargots—something I've taken up since I moved here . . . Oh, the things I've taught the locals up at my little snail farm in the mountains, you wouldn't believe it . . .” I could imagine how delighted the French must have been to be told by an Englishman how to raise snails. “You'll meet some
dear
friends of mine, Cait! Six for six-thirty. Don't be late! No, no, don't be late! Must be off—got a birthday cake to collect—very special—oh yes, very special!” Then he pushed himself out of his seat and was gone, as unexpectedly as he'd arrived.

As he was blathering on I'd been trying to think up any excuse to not go. A previous engagement? Bubonic plague? Instead, I'd folded like a cheap tent and accepted his invitation. I hit the shower at my hotel and caught a cab. That's how I came to be on the spot when Alistair Townsend died. Given how much I'd disliked him in life, and how he'd bullied me into being there, I'll call it ironic, because I don't believe in Fate.

“The ambulance is here!” wailed the freshly minted widow Tamsin, as though
she
wasn't the one who should tell them what had happened to her husband.

Before any of us could respond to her pathetic call, we were all taken aback by the sudden collapse of Madame Schiafino. Luckily she was standing near Beni Brunetti as she let out a little cry of surprise and grabbed at her left arm. She looked ashen as he helped her to a seat.

“Tell them to come here,” called Beni authoritatively, “Madelaine needs help now!”

Of course,
this time
everyone was immediately concerned, and that concern grew as Gerard Fontainbleu suddenly sat down hard and lost
his
color, too.

“I, also, am not very well,” the old man stated somewhat feebly.

I was wondering who'd be next to drop, and my immediate thought was “poison.” I did a quick mental review of what we'd consumed that evening. We'd all drunk champagne poured from the same bottles, we'd taken slices of sausage or nibbled olives from the same plates, we'd helped ourselves from one huge bowl of salad and one huge platter of Alistair's escargots, and we'd ripped bread from the same loaves. If some sort of poison had already attacked three of our party, surely we would all be affected, sooner or later? I could feel panic grow in the pit of my stomach—at least, I hoped that was what it was.

Clearly, Beni was working through the same mental processes as me, and his expression showed concern. As one of the paramedics attended to Madelaine, Beni's commanding voice carried through the shimmering evening air.

“We must
all
be attended to, and the police must be alerted. I think we have all been poisoned.” I hated to hear my own fears spoken aloud.

“Sure—poisoned,” scoffed Chuck, then he turned pale. A fearful look crossed his face almost immediately. “You know, I don't feel too good myself,” he admitted.

By the time the police arrived Madelaine was being given oxygen, Gerard was having his blood pressure taken, Chuck was squealing with terror and trying to measure his own pulse, and Beni was shouting loudly in Italian into his mobile phone. I was beginning to wonder if I was just getting caught up in some sort of mass hysteria, or if I was really experiencing palpitations.

To top it all, Tamsin was still waggling her smoking twigs about the place and wailing something about the “Curse of the Celtic Collar,” which she seemed to be convinced had befallen our group. She was also ranting on that the “Celtic Collar” in question had been stolen. Not knowing anything about the missing item, nor believing in curses, I decided it was best to tune her out completely. I mean, her husband was dead and we'd probably all been poisoned—where
was
the woman's sense of priorities?

Luckily, one of the policemen spoke English: he immediately told Tamsin to extinguish her sticks and he quietened Chuck with some sharp words about “disturbing the peace.” He ensured that the paramedics attended to us all before we were whisked away to the hospital for a battery of tests that left me feeling like I'd had a run-in with a particularly bad-tempered porcupine.

For hours I was told to
restez-vous
on an incredibly uncomfortable hospital gurney, endured being poked with syringes, and had innumerable little sticky patches attached to various parts of my anatomy, only to have them unceremoniously ripped off again without their seeming to have served any purpose.

I finally found myself being pushed by two giggling nurses into a corridor, where I was then completely abandoned, still hooked up to a drip that was feeding clear fluid into me and a monitor that had the most annoying habit of buzzing every few seconds. To be honest, I felt fine. Well, okay, I felt very annoyed and quite frustrated, but fine.

My annoyance must have subsided long enough for me to doze off for a while, because I awoke from a dream that involved my battling against giant wasps—some subliminal attempt to deal with the memories of lots of needles? I was now in a semi-sitting position in a large, echoing, grey-tiled room, with the policeman who had answered the call to the Townsends' apartment. He was hovering at my side, peering at me intently, with another officer who was his superior—judging by his manner and the fact that he was in “plainclothes.”

The superior officer spoke in French, and the younger man translated into English, something for which I was grateful, because my French is somewhat limited. At any rate, I certainly didn't have the mental capacity, given my circumstances, to grasp what he was saying. I was informed that my various tests had been assessed and that, while I would have to spend the rest of the night in the hospital “under observation,” I didn't show any signs of my life being in immediate danger.

So, the good news came first. Then came the inevitable bad news.

While not being in a position to specify, the “boss-officer” made it clear that we had all been exposed to the same toxin at the party, and that this toxin had, in all likelihood, killed our host.
I
could have told
them
that! He added gravely that, until more was known about the exact cause of Alistair's demise, I wasn't to leave Nice, nor would any other members of our group be allowed to do so, as we were all “persons of interest in a case of an unexplained death.” I gave them my contact details and was “requested” to attend the police station the next morning at 11:00
AM
for an interview. As they left me there on my gurney, I thought to myself,
What a great way to start a long weekend in the south of France!

Mind you, if I'd known then just how much worse it was going to get, I might have seen being poisoned and becoming a murder suspect as high spots.

AFTER A LITTLE NAP, I
was wide awake. You know, the sort of “wide awake” that means you're quite certain sleep is beyond your grasp. All I could do was try to ignore the buzzing machine next to me,
and
try not to worry about what poison I might have been served at dinner. Not easy.

My watch told me it was two o'clock in the morning. Nice is nine hours ahead of Vancouver, so it was only five o'clock in the afternoon there—a great time to get hold of people. My cell phone was in my purse, which was jammed beneath my body, but there were signs all over the walls making it clear that I shouldn't use it, even if I could have managed to get hold of it. Besides . . . who would I call? My mind leapt to Bud. He would be the one to talk to at a time like this.

For a couple of years Bud Anderson had been the head of Vancouver's Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, or Mr. I-HIT, as he liked to call himself. I'd been working with him over the past twelve months or so as a “sometimes consultant.” Bud would call me if he thought I might be able to help his team, and I'd profile a victim to help gain an understanding of their life or life patterns. He'd recently taken on a Big New Job. He was setting up a unit to work out the way that gangs and organized crime worked in Vancouver, across Canada, and internationally. All very hush, hush.

I liked Bud and his patient, supportive wife Jan, but I hadn't seen much of them since he'd been promoted—or “given the Gangbusters job,” as he put it. A dinner plan cancelled here, a coffee date postponed there. I missed the way he seemed to understand me, and how he supported my not always favorably viewed expertise. I also missed how much Jan spoiled me when I was with them—almost as much as they both spoiled their tubby black lab, Marty. I always got the “human treats,” as she called them, lovely little nibbles made of chocolate and Rice Krispies.

As I squirmed to get more comfortable on the unyielding gurney, I wished I could hear Bud's calm, confident, commanding voice. He'd help me gain some perspective. But calling him would have to wait.

Generally speaking, I'm a “rule observer”: the one and only time I ever parked in a disabled parking spot, I got towed—typical for me. Both my upbringing and my natural defense mechanisms have led me to try to not break the rules, if at all possible.

So I was on my own. What to do until I was unhooked and released? I resigned myself to reliving the events that had brought me to this situation.

Frankly, I shouldn't have been anywhere near Nice, let alone rolled up in a blanket having cheated death. My dear, but annoying, colleague Frank “I'm not afraid of mountain biking down Blackcomb Mountain at the age of sixty” McGregor, our Faculty's specialist in internet crime, had fallen off his stupid bike and broken his stupid collarbone and his even stupider right leg. So I had been “volunteered” by my Head of Department to fly to Nice to present daredevil Frank's paper at the symposium. Of course, at the time, I'd jumped at the chance of an all-expenses paid break in the south of France. I mean—who wouldn't?

“We'll cover your classes, Cait, and you can represent Frank and the Faculty. You'll fly out tonight, and arrive in Nice on Thursday. Frank's paper is due for presentation just before lunch on Friday. The University of Vancouver will be proud of you—I know you'll do a good job. You only have to formally present the paper and be prepared to answer some very general questions about Frank's methodology. You can read the briefing papers on the airplane. You'll have a marvellous time.”

Those had been the words from my boss that had sent me home on a cloud of dreamy expectations to hurriedly pack and rush off to Vancouver International Airport to undertake the twenty-hour journey. Two changes of airplanes later, I finally emerged from Nice's airport bleary-eyed, heavily rumpled, and ready to savor all that the Cote d'Azur had to offer. After a good nap and a bit of a wash and brush up, that is.

If Frank hadn't gone mountain biking, and if I hadn't been chosen to replace him, I'd never have been sitting at that bar sipping a glass of wine in the warmth of the May sunshine when Alistair walked by. I wouldn't have been poisoned, or have been there when Alistair died. Clearly, it was all Frank's fault. At last—I had someone to blame!

Oh dear . . . poor Frank. He was probably feeling even more uncomfortable than I was at that moment: it can't be easy being almost totally immobile down one whole side of your body. For six to eight weeks, they'd said. They also say it does one good to think of someone who's worse off than oneself. Even though I'd been poisoned and was now a suspect in an unexplained death, Frank certainly fit the bill of someone worse off than me. As was Alistair. After all, whatever I might have thought of him—and none of those thoughts were good—he was dead. And that's about as bad as it gets.

I was back to Alistair again.

Alistair Townsend: I had hated him in life, and I suspected I was going to hate him even more in death. He'd screwed up a part of my life . . . well, okay, just a few years of it, while I'd worked for him. The advertising agency world has always been a pretty cut-throat business, but Alistair was much more of an “I'll find someone else to stab you in the back” type of operator. People had their careers ruined, they'd lost jobs and seen their marriages dissolve into chaos, and some had lost their homes and businesses . . . all because Alistair wanted to have everything work out to
his
advantage, and because he had knowledge about people that they didn't want him to share, so they did his dirty work for him. I'd been told at the time, by someone who had firsthand knowledge of such things, that more than one Alcoholics Anonymous group in London's Soho, the heart of ad-agency-land, had members courtesy of Alistair's machinations. And I, along with others I'd known back in those distant days, suspected that he was linked to at least two suicides—indirectly, of course.