Second Wind Page 19

  “Do you know who took it?” Jett asked.

  “Do you remember what George Loricroft said at breakfast?”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “Something about Kris must have left the dipstick on the ground at Doncaster when he clipped shut the folded-back engine cowling.”

  “Absolutely right, but Kris didn’t unclip or fold back the engine cowling at all at Doncaster, so George couldn’t have seen that. Add to that a few more facts, such as George’s car was in the park near Kris’s private airplane. Glenda had just told him that I would have him investigated. He knew I’d been to Trox Island, but didn’t know what I’d learned there. And he could have known oil on the windshield could kill. as he could have read about a case of it that was in the news last year.”

  “That’s damning.” Jett said.

  “And all circumstantial. He could have folded back half of the engine cowling and taken out the dipstick. Also he might not.”

  It was a bit later that I asked why we weren’t on the right road in London. Wait and see, Miss van Els uttered calmly, and soon after that she found a parking place in a side street near wide busy Marylebone Road.

  “Follow me ... in sickness and in health:” Jett said with humor, and I found myself in a medical specialist’s waiting room in an annex to a small private hospital that I certainly couldn’t afford. The specialist’s name, a placard informed me, was Dr. Ravi Chand, citizen of Uttar Pradesh.

  “I can’t stay long,” I warned. “At two-thirty I’m due in Wood Lane:”

  Jett didn’t answer but was some sort of miracle worker, as in a very short time I was prodded, inspected and generally turned inside out by a briskly competent Indian practitioner with a wide grin of splendid teeth. To Jett, summoned as my nursing companion, the odd news was delivered in the neat accent of New Delhi.

  “My dear Jett, your impatient Dr. Stuart isn’t suffering from radiation sickness of any sort, nor are his troubles to do with fractured ribs. He is developing a rash which is still under his skin but may erupt into sores in a day or two, or perhaps later today. He has been infected with a disease I can’t readily identify. I need to grow cultures and take blood tests. Meanwhile, he shouldn’t go to work, but I can give him prescriptions to allay the severe nausea ... This may be unwelcome news to you, my dear Jett—and how nice it is to see you again—but I would advise you not to sleep with this young man until we know how infectious he may be.”

  Demurely she said, “He hasn’t asked me yet.”

  “That’s unfair,” I protested. “Who said don’t hurry? Consider yourself asked.”

  Ravi Chand smiled, ruminated, inspected his nails, which were lighter against the brown of his fingers, and told me to rest in bed (alone) in the hospital next door for at least a day or until he knew what was wrong with me.

  “I can’t afford it,” I said, and got overruled by Dr. Chand’s quick reply that money came tailed off compared with health. He himself called the BBC and alarmed them far too much. So I spent a worse pincushion and pill-popping afternoon with X rays, C.T. scan and embarrassing interior searches, and wrote as requested a long list of where I’d been in the past two months. Halfway through the list I realized what might be wrong with me, relaying the revelation to the gleeful satisfaction of my Indian inquisitor.

  “Cows!” he exclaimed. “I thought so. Unpasteurized milk! Paratuberculosis!” He frowned. “You do not, though, have any ordinary form of tuberculosis. I had you tested for that routinely, to begin with.”

  He bustled away, thin, good-humored, dedicated to mystery solving.

  In a bedroom that would have honored a hotel for comfort I watched someone else on television foretell cold showery periods for the following day with a chance of sunshine in Wales, later, and I recognized with gratitude that the feeling of abject illness had abated to a much more bearable level. Jett, returning to visit briefly in the evening, wore an anti-infection surgical mask, and having incautiously asked what she could do for me, made a face at the length of my list.

  “In sickness and in health,” I reminded her teasingly.

  “For richer, for poorer,” she replied, nodding. “I promised Ravi I would pay your bill here, so you can cross off number one on your list, ‘bring credit cards over.’ You don’t need them.”

  “Bugger that,” I said. “Please do get the cards.”

  “I’ll pay your bill out of the money I earned looking after your grandmother. That,” Jett explained, “came from your BBC salary, didn’t it? I know it did.”

  I said, shaking my head. “After all those dreadful tests today, you must leave me at least a little pride.”

  “Oh.” She blinked. “I’m not used to your sort of man. I’m not used to self-sufficient survivors. I’m used to adult little boys being brave but needing succor. Needing comfort. Needing their hands held. Why don’t you?”

  I would give it a try, I thought, one day.

  “Please bring my cards,” I meanwhile said.

  The looking glass in the morning (Thursday) confirmed the Indian doctor’s prognosis. There were three sores round my mouth and several small outposts of the same bad news from forehead to chin, from chin to waist, and other places besides. The knowledgeable product of New Delhi seemed quite pleased however, and sent in well-protected and gloved nurses with relays of pills, needles and swabs.

  He hustled in again himself at what would have been lunchtime if I’d felt like it, and with obvious pleasure rattled off his diagnosis.

  “The already good news is of course that you don’t have straightforward tuberculosis, as we’d established already,” he said. “The rest of the news, my dear Dr. Stuart, is that you have a variation of an already rare complication of Mycobacterium paramberculosis.”

  He waited quizzically for some sort of reaction from me, but all I was numbly thinking was that it seemed to be my week for long incomprehensible medical terminology and other words to that effect.

  “The point is,” the precise voice confided, “that an absolutely positive culture may take weeks, as this is a bacterium that’s uncommonly difficult to grow in a Petri dish.”

  I said, horrified, “I can’t afford weeks away from work.”

  “No, no, of course not. We have already started you on antibiotics, and as far as can be seen up to now, you are not developing Crohn’s disease—good news—or Johne’s disease, which is more or less endemic in cattle—more good news. The best of all news is that on present showing, you should make a full recovery.” He paused, considering, then said, “This infection you have, this unusual variant of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis ... it’s from a strain that was developed originally for measuring how much or how little heat was needed to achieve viable infection after pasteurization. I would say that you might have drunk raw milk from a cow with yet another new variant ...” He broke off. then continued, “I see you understand what I’m saying.”

  An experimental herd, I thought. A mixed herd, with specimens of several breeds: Charolais. Hereford, Angus, Brahman ... Friesian ...

  A herd isolated on an island, breeding only among itself ... The presence and the purpose of the cattle on Trox abruptly made sense.

  “Very little is known about the human incidence of paratubercutosis.” the Indian said cheerfully. “I’ll bring you some information booklets, if you like. In return, you might tell me where I can find this cow.”

  “Thank you ... yes, O.K.... When can I leave?”

  He looked at his watch, but dashed my hopes.

  “Sunday,” he said. “Perhaps. The tests I’m running will not be conclusive until Sunday morning, and even then I’m accelerating them.” He smiled primly. “I will eventually publish my results. Until then I will keep my findings thoroughly locked away, and I’m afraid even you won’t know every detail before I publish ...”

  “Do you mean.” I asked slowly, “that you will meanwhile lock your findings ... in a safe?”

  “Certainly. There is fierce competition among researchers. I do
not want any competitor to scoop me, now do I?”

  The word scoop sat amusingly on his tongue, but did explain the purpose of the safe on Trox Island. The results from the experimental herd were worth a lifetime’s fortune in prestige. I’d been grateful to those cows. Too late to wish I’d starved.

  “Am I still likely to infect anyone else?” I asked.

  He took longer to answer, then he said. “Just bear in mind that no one knows. Among cattle the basic disease— Johne‘s—is only spread through ingesting either feces or infected milk:’ He grinned broadly. ”You should be all right here. Visitors may come without a mask.”

  Jett came often, usually with my grandmother’s gifts of a book not too heavy for holding when sitting in a wheelchair or bed, or anywhere with gin and tonic or busted ribs. Even though upright and walking round and round a civilized room, I learned from Wednesday to Sunday an approximation of my grandmother’s restricted life.

  I talked to her on Thursday on the telephone, and I sent her a bowl of Christmas roses and a spray bottle of cologne.

  On Friday morning early, colleagues at work called to urge my a.s.a.p. return, as it seemed I had won the annual Bracknell Meteorological Office sweepstake by guessing which day in the year would register the hottest shade temperature on the roof (September first) and they wanted to help me with unpopping the cork of the prize bottle of fizz.

  They had barely left me smiling when I had Bell exploding in trouble in my ear. almost unintelligibly full of a five-star disaster.

  “Slow down, dearest Bell,” I begged, hoping that what she’d just told me pretty hysterically was at least only half true. “What did you say about Glenda?”

  “I told you,” she shouted. “Why don’t you bloody listen? Kris is frantic. She stole his trains...”

  “Bell. Slow down.”

  “She jumped in front of a train.” The words still tumbled out.

  “Glenda?”

  “Of course, Glenda ... Stop being so stupid. An underground train. Late last night. The police came here this morning. She’s ... terribly ... dead. They’ve not long gone.”

  Bell swallowed between words to get them out, but she was audibly crying. “I’ve talked to Dad ...”

  “Bell ...” I had at last, and with growing dismay, taken it in. “Where are you? Is somebody with you? Kris? Jett could be with you ... I could come myself.”

  “No, you can’t, you’re in hospital. Glenda yattered all the way to London on Wednesday and honestly I got fed up with her—oh hell...” She gulped, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “I wish I had been nicer to her, but I’ve never truly liked her ... I’ve done my best while I’ve been working for George, but I was going to change jobs—but that’s only half of it and the rest is worse.”

  It couldn’t be much worse, I thought, and of course I was wrong.

  Bell said, “Glenda went on and on about George being a traitor. She said she couldn’t bear to be married to a traitor. She said she’d told you all about it, and you knew it was true—and she couldn’t bear the shame of having a trial ... she couldn’t live with the disgrace ... and I thought ... I thought she was exaggerating, you know how she always rattles on and swings her arms about ... Oh dear. Oh dear ...”

  I’d tried Kris’s flat several times without reply, so into the pause for sobs I asked again, “Bell, where are you right now?”

  “In your attic.” Bell said it matter-of-factly as if I should have expected it. “We moved in here yesterday evening. Kris had a key,” she added. “He said you wouldn’t mind. We’d got so utterly bored with Glenda going on and on all day yesterday, so when she finally went out at last we just came here to get away from her and of course we never dreamt ...”

  The unstoppable sobs, I thought, might almost have a compound of guilt.

  “When Glenda was with you,” I asked, “couldn’t you in any way have calmed her about George?”

  “Perry.” Bell’s voice on the telephone was a wail. “You don’t understand. The Newmarket police went to George’s house to tell him Glenda was dead. They didn’t go to arrest him. They just went because of Glenda...” Bell fell into a silence that seemed past even sobs.

  “Go on,” I said, “What did George say?”

  “He was dead,” Bell said.

  “Dead?”

  Bell said jerkily, “He was upstairs in his bedroom. He had been hit on the back of his head. His skull was crushed. The police went round to see Dad because of me working for George, and they told him George was dead ... and Glenda had left a letter in the bedroom saying she couldn’t bear the disgrace ...” She wept. “Dad told the police to look for us here because I wasn’t at Kris’s place.”

  “Are you saying,” I asked her plainly, “that while Glenda sat in Newmarket, in her kitchen, telling Jett and me how she’d given radiation sickness to the filly, George was lying dead upstairs?”

  “Yes.” Bell’s distress carried its own measure of horror. “He must have been. When you and Jett drove off to the Equine Research place and I went home to pack a case ... we left them in that state of really murderous fury ... she must have killed him during that time when we weren’t there ... and then she packed a few things and went down to wait for us.” Bell still couldn’t quite control her voice. “Kris thinks she told George she was going upstairs to pack as she was leaving him, and telling the world about his trade in uranium, and he went upstairs after her to stop her.”

  One could imagine George, in a rage, leaning over Glenda’s suitcase to take things out of it ... and one could also imagine Glenda, snatching up a heavy object ...

  “What did she hit him with?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Hell, Perry, what does it matter? I’ve hardly ever been in their bedroom ... they have a heavy brass clock ... modern ...” Her voice was cracking, and Jett would have reckoned she needed a tranquilizer, or better, a hug.

  “Is Kris with you now?” I asked.

  “He went to get some food.”

  “Then eat it.”

  “Glenda!” she said miserably. “And George!”

  Disbelief racked her, and she felt more pain for them dead than she’d felt affection for them while they lived.

  It would be no use telling her not to think about them. She had known them for most of her life.

  I thought of them myself as I had seen them first at Caspar Harvey’s lunch, no odder than many a bickering married couple, and I thought how their central cores had slowly begun a meltdown after that, until the bedrock character had clarified in each.

  George’s innate villainy had taken over from the still respected racehorse trainer until he was ready to try killing with blinding oil. Glenda with her foolish unfounded sexual suspicions had uncovered not the lover but the traitor in her house, and in shame and disillusion had both killed and died.

  I thought of the manifest instinct to destroy that had throbbed between the pair of them in that kitchen. There had been, that Wednesday morning, the basic bloody urge of nature ... all red teeth and claws.

  Did a murderer, I wondered, live deep within us all?

  11

  At around noon I ran dear disheveled Melanie to the other end of the wire and asked if I could speak to my ghostwriter about my book on storms. “Sure,” she blithely replied and in a moment Ghost himself was saying, “I thought you’d come out in spots:”

  “Spots don’t gag you.”

  “So I gather you want to talk:”

  “There are storms present and future,” I said. “There are things you should know.”

  “On our way.”

  They both came, long John Rupert and insubstantial Ghost.

  I invited them to sit down, and apologized for the imitation measles I could well have done without. Ravi Chand expected the rash would fade by Sunday, but Sunday seemed a long way off. I looked a mess.

  “What’s wrong with you?” John Rupert asked.

  “Mycobacterium paratuberculosis variant X.”

  “Ah,” on
e said and “Yes, of course,” said the other. Neither had ever seen it before, but then, nor had anyone else.

  “Last night,” I said, trying not to make it sound too theatrical, “Glenda Loricroft, wife of George, jumped in front of an underground train.” Their mouths opened speechlessly. “On Wednesday morning in Newmarket it seems she had bashed in her husband’s skull. He lay undiscovered in his bedroom until the police found him this morning, when they went to tell him his wife had killed herself.”

  John Rupert and Ghost started breathing again, and I said, “Before you ask, he had not been unduly missed by the staff of his racing stable, because he constantly traveled overseas without saying where he was going. He supervised a schooling session early on Wednesday morning—I was there myself. So was Belladonna Harvey, his assistant, but when neither she nor George nor George’s wife appeared yesterday morning, or today, the head groom simply carried on with the stable routine as he’d done several times before.”

  They listened intently while I told them about Glenda, the filly, the alpha-particle powder and the lead container. I asked them, after that, if they had any authority to search Loricroft’s world? The answer seemed to be somewhere between “No” and “It depends” and “It’s up to the Newmarket police.” There was no simple “Yes.”

  “Of all the possible Traders,” I remarked, “George Loricroft might have been the one most likely to handle and keep orders from foreign sources ... but he’s been dead two days.”

  John Rupert nodded, “His Trader colleagues will have picked the body clean. But what would you have hoped to find? He would have been too careful. They always are. The real question now is, who will take his place?”

  A thoughtful silence ensued. Glenda’s spurious snowfalls, Ghost said, had put more than a husband out of action. There would be a pause for regrouping. A vulnerable period, he thought, for the Traders.

  John Rupert asked me again, “What would you have hoped to find at Loricroft’s place?”

  “I suppose names and addresses would have been too much to hope for,” I said. “Glenda herself might have got rid of anything obviously damaging. She had time. But how about a dipstick in the trunk of his car, say, with smears of oil matching that in the crunched airplane? How about bank statements, phone bills ... a paper trail?”