Gage chuckled and pulled out a chair. “That’s quite all right. Have a seat. Linda Zamiella, I’d like to present Dr. Plato Marley. He’s an infertility specialist, but he was at the Thorndyke party last night and thought we might need his help.”
They shook hands. Zamiella’s white laboratory coat was spotless. The only flaw in her appearance was a menagerie of dogeared journal articles spilling from her pockets.
“I was explaining that some of Mr. Thorndyke’s symptoms seemed unusual for food poisoning,” Plato told her, ignoring Gage’s sarcastic introduction. “It’s hard to put a finger on it, but his case seemed different. Excruciating abdominal pain, far worse than the other victims. Pain on swallowing. Later, as you know, he became delirious.”
“There’ve been some cardiogram changes as well,” Linda added, tugging a tattered heart monitor tracing from her pocket. She handed it to Gage. “I think Dr. Marley’s right. I saw a lot of the other victims last night. Most of them have already gone home. The few who were hospitalized are doing well. Except Mr. Thorndyke.”
“And Felicia Martinez, Thorndyke’s maid. She’s even worse.” Gage frowned, then glanced at Plato. “Linda hopes to become a specialist in digestive diseases, like me. What’s your impression, Dr. Zamiella?”
Linda paused for a moment, eyes unfocused. She recited as if from a formula, “Mr. Thorndyke is a sixty-year-old male in otherwise good health who presents with sudden onset of abdominal pain and dysphagia, eventually lapsing into delirium. Signs of shock have been accompanied by an abnormal heart rhythm, but peritoneal signs are absent. My impression is that Mr. Thorndyke’s symptoms cannot be explained solely by spoiled food.”
“What can account for them?” Gage challenged.
Linda shrugged and knuckled her forehead. “What about some kind of non-bacterial poisoning, like mercury?” She dredged her capacious pockets again. Like hamsters pouching food, interns often tuck entire reference libraries into their coats. “I just read an article last month in the Archives. Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and shock are common symptoms.”
Gage chewed a fingernail. “But where would Mr. Thorndyke have received such a dose of mercury? Even hatters don’t see much of it these days.”
“It’s common in some insecticides. And, well...”
“Besides, Linda, how are our patient’s kidney functions?”
She squirmed. “Umm, well—”
The old physician touched her arm gently. “It’s a good thought, but it doesn’t seem likely. At his age, those nonspecific changes could mean just about anything. Excessive stress. An underlying medical condition.”
He snapped the chart shut like a judge rapping a gavel, then delivered his verdict. “I think our diagnosis is very simple. Food poisoning, a la the crab Louis. Just like all the other patients.”
“Has he been worked up for an infection?” Plato asked, feeling like an intern again. Even though Seneca General was a community hospital, Gage had a national reputation.
The old physician laughed. “There’s nothing he hasn’t been worked up for. It’s a race with only one loser. Every specialist in the hospital’s afraid he’ll screw up. Poor Thorndyke’s going to die from loss of blood with all these tests we’re doing.”
Mrs. Leeman cracked the door open. “Dr. Gage?”
The two conferred for a moment in low whispers. As the nurse closed the door again, Gage sank into a chair, put his head in his hands.
Linda’s wide forehead wrinkled with concern. “What is it, Dr. Gage?”
“Apparently, the cardiologist also wondered about the strange heart rhythm.” Gage’s pale eyes were focused somewhere beyond the far wall. “He ordered a toxin study on Mr. Thorndyke and Felicia Martinez.”
On the table, his bony hands clutched the air. “Both of them are suffering from massive arsenic toxicity.”
Over the public address system came a woman’s carefully measured voice. “Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit. Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit.”
They scrambled from the room.
“Thorndyke was flat-line when we got there, and he never came back,” Plato told Cal later that morning. “We tried everything. There wasn’t even fibrillation. He was long gone.”
Even though she didn’t know Thorndyke very well, Cal was visibly shaken. She was camped out in an old pair of sweats on the living room sofa; the color in her face matched the vanilla pillowslip.
A pharmacopoeia of stomach remedies was scattered on the coffee table. Propping herself gingerly on an elbow, she closed her eyes and pointed randomly at the drugs. Opening them again, she chose a bottle of pink fluid, swigged a few gulps, then sank back with a groan.
“Why don’t you go to someone about that?” Plato asked. He hated seeing sick people. Just watching her made him queasy.
“I’m doing fine,” Cal sighed. Her bright brown eyes had faded to a shade somewhere between dirt and old asphalt. Beneath them, her cheeks were dark hollows. Frizzled brown hair crackled when she moved.
“If that’s what you call fine, I’d hate to be one of your patients.”
“That’s the beauty of pathology,” she said, with a grin that was more like a grimace. “None of my patients whines about my ‘setting a poor example.’ Besides, staph food poisoning is self-limited, as long as dehydration is controlled. I’m maintaining my fluids.”
“Yeah. With Pepto-Bismol and Mylanta. Bismuth and aluminum and magnesium. You’re going to rust.”
“Lucky dog. Just because you don’t like seafood.” Cal sobered suddenly. “What about the maid — what was her name?”
“Felicia Martinez,” he answered. “She did all right, at first. For a while, we almost thought she was going to make it.”
He shivered, remembering.
“What’s wrong?”
“The last time we shocked her. Right before we lost her for good.” Plato frowned, trying to picture it. “I’ve never seen it happen before. Her eyes — they opened up, and she was awake. Wide awake. Just for a second or two.”
He shoved a few bottles aside and sat on the coffee table. “She grabbed the arm of the poor intern doing CPR. Grabbed her coat. Looked right into her eyes and started mumbling something. Over and over again.”
“What was it?” Color had suddenly returned to Cal’s face. “Did you hear it? What did she say?”
“Well, it was pretty hard to make out. Something like ‘Chant’ or ‘Chan-ger.’ ”
“She spoke with an accent. Chan...” Cal gasped. “How about ‘Jan’?”
Her husband nodded. “You’re not the first to think of that. There were eight people in that room. Half of them are convinced Felicia was saying ‘Jan.’ I’m not so sure.”
She shook her head. “I can’t see it. To kill her husband that way. Jan just isn’t that kind of person. Is she?”
“Who knows?” he replied. “But it provides a very simple solution. Jan Thorndyke was a pharmacist at the hospital before she met Rufus.”
Cal nodded her head, sank back in the sofa. “But maybe the solution’s a little too simple.”
They were quiet for a while, and Cal’s eyes drifted closed. Watching her in the stillness, Plato heard the soft ticks of the grandfather clock by the fireplace, the gentle hiss of a summer shower on the courtyard outside the open french doors.
A slamming car door interrupted his thoughts. He walked to the front window. A blue and white police cruiser with gold county sheriff’s stars was parked in the drive. Up the walk slumped a redhaired, gray-bearded dwarf in a rumpled mackintosh he wore summer or winter, rain or shine.
Ian Donal Cameron. “Don” when they wanted to irritate him. “Ian” when they didn’t.
Plato opened the door before he could knock.