Everybody echoed, “Frankie Almond, Private Eye,” and drank.
Then Andrew coughed.
Nancy said, “Wow, is this stuff disgusting, or what?”
“Just don’t tell Entertainment Tonight,” Victoria said cheerily.
“If it meant success for the series,” Brett said, “I’d happily drink it every day.”
But Andrew’s problem was not just that some of the unusual liqueur had gone down the wrong way. He continued to cough, and choke, and then he began to thrash.
Nancy, next to him, at first assumed this was some kind of attention-seeking maneuver but after looking more carefully at his face even she was concerned. “Andrew? Are you all right?”
But Nancy’s concern didn’t result in a cure. Andrew choked again and, perhaps responding to her voice, he sprawled over Nancy, her place setting, the whole shebang.
“Get off me,” Nancy said. “I mean it. Get off. Stop messing.”
Andrew did get off. He rolled onto the floor.
From her position across the table Lorelei said, “It looks like he had a fit.”
Brett, next to Lorelei, was concerned for Nancy. “Are you all right?”
Nancy was fine and said so, but Lorelei stood up to see where Andrew was lying. “He’s gone limp.”
Victoria intervened. “Grimm,” she said, “please see to Andrew.”
“Yes, Ms. Victoria.” Grimm moved to where Andrew lay sprawled on the dining room carpet and knelt. After a few moments of examination he rose. He shook his head.
“Grimm?” Victoria said, anxiety in her voice.
“Ms. Victoria, I regret to inform you that the gentleman is dead.”
There were gasps from around the table.
Victoria said, “Dead? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Ms. Victoria. I worked for three years in an abattoir. I know dead when I see it.”
“Has he... had a heart attack?”
“Of that I cannot be certain, Ms. Victoria.”
“Well,” Victoria said, “that’s quite put me off my food. I must say, we don’t get many people dying between the apéritif and the hors d’oeuvres where I come from, but this is New York, I suppose.”
Lorelei was shocked. “Victoria! How can you be so heartless? And him your boyfriend.”
“Hardly a boy,” Victoria said. “And this is still a special night, once-in-a-lifetime for us all. Frankie is still going to series, and I can hardly expect my guests to dig into their tucker with a corpse lying on the floor. Grimm, remove Andrew, please. Take him to the living room.”
“Yes, Ms. Victoria.”
As the other guests watched in stunned disbelief, Grimm took Andrew’s feet and dragged his body toward the door.
Finally it was Lorelei who asked, “Is that something he ought to be doing? I mean, shouldn’t we be leaving the evidence alone?”
Victoria asked, “What do you mean, evidence?”
“Well, Andrew seemed healthy a couple of minutes ago. There’s going to have to be an autopsy, and the police will need to be involved.”
“I’d really rather not,” Victoria said.
Nancy was less certain about police involvement. “At least don’t you think that maybe Grimm should call a doctor?”
“Grimm will do everything that’s required.”
And by that time Grimm had dragged Andrew’s remains through to the living room. A few moments later he returned, closing the door behind him. “Ms. Victoria?”
“Yes, Grimm?”
“I have laid the corpus by the white leather couch, but I have the sad obligation to inform you that it is my belief that the gentleman was poisoned.”
Now, Victoria was aghast. “Poisoned? But Grimm, that would mean that one of us murdered him.”
“Exactly so, Ms. Victoria,” Grimm said.
As the first shock of Grimm’s news sank in, the people around the table tried to reconstruct what had happened. As members of the Frankie Almond, Private Eye production team, they even felt that they had qualifications for the job, of a sort.
Nancy, the director, spoke first. “Grimm, what on earth leads you to believe that Andrew was poisoned?”
“Because, Ms. Nancy, the gentleman collapsed so rapidly and his skin was very pink as I laid him out on the hall floor.”
“So what? My mother died of a heart attack while she was jogging in the park and she was pink as a pig.”
But Lorelei, the writer, had taken the next step. “Cyanide.”
“I beg your pardon,” Nancy said.
“I think Grimm is suggesting that Andrew was killed with cyanide.”
“Exactly so, Ms. Lorelei.”
Lorelei knew about cyanide. “Cyanide is extremely toxic and it’s also widely available because it’s used in a lot of common products. Many of them can easily be administered orally. What happens is that the victim’s stomach acid acts to release hydrogen cyanide gas. That causes immediate unconsciousness. Death follows within a minute, a few minutes at most.”
“How the hell do you know all this?” Nancy asked, for everyone.
“Cya-Nora,” Lorelei said.
“Say what?”
“Early photographers used potassium cyanide in their processing. I used it as a poison in my play about Nora North, the suffragette photographer-detective, when she went to Japan. Hence, the title, Cya-Nora.”
But Brett recalled something. “I thought you could smell cyanide.”
“You can,” Lorelei said. “But it smells of almonds. And what have we all been drinking?”
Victoria said, “My special almond cordial. Oh dear.”
“Which would mask the cyanide smell completely,” Lorelei concluded.
“But Grimm,” Brett said, “are you saying that one of us poisoned Andrew with cyanide?”
“That would appear to be a reasonable conjecture, Mr. Brett.”
As a ripple ran round the table, Brett said, “But who...? Why...?”
“I may be able to be of further assistance, sir,” Grimm said. “Ms. Victoria, if I may?”
“You carry on, Grimm,” Victoria said.
“When I laid the gentleman’s remains on the carpet, I chanced to discover an audio cassette tape in the breast pocket of his jacket.”
“Do they still make those?” Nancy said.
“The cassette in question bears a label which reads, ‘To be played if I am dead.’” Grimm held up the cassette and showed everyone the label.
This news was a further shock for the already shocked company.
Grimm said, “If I might have permission to utilize your mini-stack, Ms. Victoria?”
“Any time, Grimm.”
Grimm inserted the cassette tape into a small sound system on a buffet at the side of the dining room and pressed play. Soon Andrew’s mellifluous voice was heard clearly throughout the room. “My name is Andrew Stark. If anything bad has happened to me tonight, then it wasn’t from natural causes. I just had a checkup and I’m in perfect health — a fine specimen of manhood. So if there’s no knife in my back or bullet hole between my eyes, then I must have been poisoned...”
A murmur went around the room.
“When Victoria invited me to this Frankie Almond dinner I accepted immediately. Why? Not just because I adore Victoria’s incomparable company...”
“He was such a sweet boy,” Victoria said.
“... but because it seemed the ideal opportunity to confront Nancy Oliver in person.”
“What?” Victoria said. She looked at Grimm.
“Because it was Nancy who stole my idea for Frankie Almond.”