Chapter 3
"June is a perfect month," Elizabeth told her guests at breakfast happily, "for making plans. But I feel that about every month. And I'm afraid that we won't have any June weddings this year, with July so close, unless we hurry! Oh, I think the caterers are here—Roger placed an order with Coterie to cater our breakfast this morning; I believe that's them now," she concluded, hearing a stir in the hallway. Julia and Barnabas sat forward, looking a little brighter on learning that digestible food was to appear. They had been braced for Mrs. Johnson's hot orange juice, boiled corn muffins and deadly coffee.
Elizabeth entered the foyer and welcomed the caterers, who followed her into the drawing room, bringing delicious aromas with them. There was a large mushroom-onion-spinach omelet for sharing, there were croissants and toast, butter, and heavenly hot coffee. Veronika Liska served herself rapidly and began to crunch toast. Julia Hoffman, on an easier schedule that didn't dictate inhabiting a clinic ten hours a day, was able to linger over coffee and eat more slowly. She and Barnabas exchanged the secret glances of mates as they passed coffee and cream to one another.
They, and Roger and Veronika, were here with Elizabeth Stoddard to discuss definite wedding dates. Barnabas had proposed to Julia two months earlier. Since Collinwood was going to have two weddings this upcoming season—one here, and one in the Old House, both wedding parties enthusiastically intending to engage Coterie to cater their event—it was a good idea to get together now and plan, and choose the days they wanted for their ceremonies.
"Well!" cried a perspiring Roger, smiling at his beautiful fiancée, "Veronika and I have discussed this, and if it won't interfere with Julia and Barnabas' plans, we have tentatively chosen the weekend of July sixth. Veronika can get time off and have a physician fill in for her. I can arrange to have nearly three weeks off around that time from the Cannery, if we put Quentin in my spot to oversee things. It'll have to be July, because it's impossible to get a physician substitute for August."
Barnabas and Julia quickly glanced at one another, and Barnabas took her hand with a meaningful look on his face. She gave him a slow smile. Elizabeth noticed this.
"Barnabas, Julia? Is that perhaps the same date that you two had chosen?"
"It is," Barnabas admitted, his eyes twinkling. "But we have thought of other dates as well. And truly, we don't intend to have much of a ceremony at the Old House. Julia and I—" he turned to Julia—"We'd be just as glad to have a Justice of the Peace and a witness or two."
Roger had been blinking hard. "Witnesses," he grunted, a little nonsensically. He began to fan himself.
"But I want to be at your wedding!" Elizabeth wailed. "I can't be at your ceremony and at my brother's on the same day. That is, unless—"
"But this is really no problem at all," Veronika declared decisively, brushing her lips with a napkin, "I can just as easily arrange these same plans for late September. I've made some calls. I can have Dr. Delvecchio take the clinic for the last two weeks of September; it doesn't have to be Dr. Torres in July." She smiled. "Although my fiancé tells me that September is a bit too long to wait."
Roger, whose eyes were glittering feverishly, now wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve and gestured with his toast. "Well," he barked, "perhaps this entire venture is a mistake!"
Veronika looked at him enquiringly. Roger was behaving oddly. Julia leaned forward.
"There really isn't any trouble, as far as I can see," she commented. "Barnabas and I could be married on the fifth and Veronika and Roger on the sixth, or vice-versa, or even on the seventh—or any other day. Coterie could cater both events. We need be mindful only of one schedule, Veronika's and Roger's. Though I've got to be at Windcliff for a period of time before autumn."
"I was going to suggest—a double wedding!" Elizabeth chirped. "Then we would all be together and have a major affair, with Coterie handling it. But this is only if all of you decide that this appeals to you. I saw these little calendar cards the last time I was at the drugstore. You can refer to them in picking out dates if need be." She floated around their circle of chairs, passing out the cards.
The ladies turned to one another with interest. The idea of a double wedding was attractive.
Roger was now rhythmically rubbing sweat from his cheeks and looking a bit the worse for wear. He gave a very loud, gusting sigh. Veronika looked at him and laid a gentle hand on his sleeve.
"Are you all right?" she asked softly.
He suddenly opened his eyes wide and stared at Julia Hoffman. After a second, Julia noticed this and returned Roger's gaze. She smiled, but Roger's face remained unmoving and somehow strangely speculative. He looked as though he was considering an idea that had never occurred to him before. He kept his eyes on Julia's face.
"Then there is always the avenue of young lovers," Barnabas murmured handsomely, "or, perhaps, of smart ones. Have a civil ceremony on one day just to be married, and hold a reception on another day with guests, caterers—"
"Yes," Julia seconded, "we could do that if anyone's in a rush. It would give the people at Coterie time to—"
"I'll do it!" Roger suddenly burst out, slapping both his thighs with an explosive sound and trying at the same time to stand up. "Julia Hoffman, will you be my bride?"
Everyone started at the loud noise Roger had made, and Julia and Veronika laughed.
"Wait now, Roger," Barnabas chuckled, "you've got the wrong redhead. This one here is mine."
Roger had lurched to his feet. "The wrong redhead!" he bellowed in a voice loud enough to make the chandelier above them chatter, "so it all comes out at last! I can't be married." He wove drunkenly away from his chair, his face bright red. "Won't, by God!"
He stumbled violently sideways, nearly landing in Veronika's lap. She instinctively reached up and grasped his wrist to steady him, and gasped at the heat coming off his skin. Roger crabbily pushed at her to free himself.
"Rather marry Julia, anyway. It's Julia for me!" Roger blurted.
"Roger, can you possibly be drunk at this hour?" Elizabeth asked crossly.
"I've always preferred Julia and you women all know it," Roger continued, slurring his words. "Hell, I'd rather marry Barnabas than stand up with this—this—maniacal—shrew!" He began to pant, eyes wide.
Elizabeth gasped. Veronika rose from her chair.
"Roger!" Barnabas thundered loudly, furious.
"What!" Roger shouted back, swaying before Barnabas, who was now on his feet with everyone else.
"Julia, help me," implored Veronika, gripping Roger's wrist tightly. "Something's wrong. He's as hot as a furnace."
"I'll put you in a furnace, you little humbug," Roger muttered absently, trying to pull away from Veronika. Julia quickly approached from his other side and put her hand to Roger's forehead, starting in surprise when she felt the baking heat of his skin. Roger closed his eyes and tried to kiss Julia's wrist.
"My bag, Barnabas, please!" Julia urged. "Quick!"
"Is he sick?" Elizabeth asked, her eyes wide. Barnabas hurried to the drawing room doors and swept them open. When they had arrived for breakfast, Julia had deposited her locked medical bag on the hallway table.
He hastened past Hallie Stokes, who had been about to knock on the door. Her wet eyes and upset expression didn't register with him as he seized Julia's medical bag and turned back to the room.
But Roger turned and caught sight of Hallie lurking in the doorway.
"Now, there's one!" Roger roared, shaking free of both doctors with such violence that Veronika lost her footing and fell against the sofa. A manic light shone in his eyes. His breathing was ragged. He stumbled over to Hallie and, in one superb movement, swept her off her feet and into his arms with hardly a break in his stride. Hallie gave a whimper of astonishment.
Rather than physically grapple with Roger lest Hallie be injured, Barnabas hurried ahead to the front doors of Collinwood and blocked them with his body. "Put her down, Roger," he ordered. "Hallie isn't part of this."
"Stand aside, cretin. I'll take what I'll take and do what I want around here," Roger panted, gripping Hallie against him and swaying. In his peripheral vision Barnabas could see both doctors as they scrambled up behind Roger. Each woman had been into her medical bag; each was preparing a syringe. Barnabas nodded over Roger's shoulder and told him, "Before you hurry off to your wedding, you mustn't forget to have your blood tested. That is the law, yes? We can do the test this instant. Can you put Hallie down and perhaps take your jacket off?"
Roger halted for a moment in confusion. He gently released Hallie and staggered back a little, trying to think.
"Take off your jacket, it's too hot," Veronika invited, sliding Roger's jacket from his shoulders. Roger made a quick irritable movement as though to try to keep it on, but Veronika was successful. His shirt was plastered to his body. He blinked tiredly and then stared at Julia as she stepped in front of him and began rapidly unbuttoning his shirt, a syringe gripped in her teeth.
"You'll have your marriage license in no time!" Julia enunciated cheerfully over the tube as she deftly yanked the tucked shirt out of Roger's pants. "How do you like that? We aim to please."
The shirt, drenched and limp, fell to the floor with a slap. Elizabeth, who had followed the group out in to the foyer, put her hands to her cheeks. Veronika was already on Roger's right, vigorously cleaning a place on his upper arm with alcohol and a cotton swab. Roger gave his head a quick shake, like a dog, and great drops of sweat flew from his face.
"Wait a minute," he murmured, "wait. I don't want—Why is it so cold out here? Oh!" Roger grimaced and pooched his lips, frowning.
"Get him?" Julia asked out of the side of her mouth.
"Yep," Veronika muttered under her breath, removing the syringe and pressing a square of gauze against Roger's arm. Julia had not used her syringe, which she now took from between her teeth, capped and slid into her jacket pocket.
"Brava, doctors," Barnabas said quietly.
"Come with me, Roger!" Julia encouraged the bare-chested man, taking his arm and turning him back to the drawing room. "We'd better sit down and have breakfast! And I think you're feeling a little tired now."
"Yes, I am," Roger admitted, and when he lifted his eyes to Julia's, she noticed that he was having difficulty focusing.
"Well, let's get you comfortable," Julia invited. "Elizabeth, can you get a shirt or something for him to put on? That one is wringing wet."
Elizabeth hurried from the room, looking very worried.
"He's talking, breathing," observed Veronika, sitting beside Roger, who frowned at her. She put her stethoscope to his chest. Julia stood on Roger's other side, taking his pulse beat. There was a second of silence. Barnabas stood apart, watching.
"It's like winter in here," Roger whispered. "I'm so cold. What are you two doing to me?"
"Do you have pain in your chest or your arm? How about your back, or your jaw?"
"No," Roger sighed to Julia.
"He's exhibiting symptoms of shock," Veronika fretted. "Are you bleeding anywhere?"
"Roger, did you happen to strike your head this morning?"
"Did you touch something unusual, drink something before breakfast? You weren't intoxicated this morning," Veronika averred, studying him with critical concern. Roger shook his head at them both and put his face tiredly into the palm of his hand. "Julia, I want to get him to the hospital," Veronika uttered in a low voice.
"Agreed. Roger, answer us, were you sniffing anything or touching anything, like poison ivy or poison sumac?"
"No, I haven't been out of the house. What would I be sniffing?"
"Were you down in the basement, perhaps? The attic? Someplace moldy, perhaps?"
Veronika rapidly got out her blood pressure cuff and began wrapping it about Roger's arm. He looked at her in confusion. She smiled at him. "Know who I am?"
"Who you are? Yes, of course I know who you are. What a thing to ask."
"Who am I?"
"Who would you like to be?" Roger quipped, evasive.
"It couldn't be thyroid storm, could it?" Veronika ventured to Julia.
"His heart is racing. Let's see what the blood pressure says. Roger, were you drinking something or—did you use some chemicals, glue, this morning? Some sort of paint?"
"No, no, of course I didn't." Powerful shivers gripped him; his teeth rattled together. Julia released his wrist and reached for the afghan behind him and draped it over his shoulders as Veronika let off the pressure of the blood pressure cuff.
"I want to take it again," she asserted. "I can barely get a reading."
Julia looked up with interest. "Really?"
"Here, try? Roger," Veronika requested, passing the blood pressure cuff to Julia, "Does your throat feel tight? Does your tongue feel strange, or itchy, or like it's too big for your mouth?"
Roger threw back his head and laughed. Julia wrapped the cuff on his other arm and began to pump.
"No, of course not. What a silly person you are today!" Roger chuckled, smiling at Veronika and touching her nose with his fingertip.
Veronika continued to question Roger while Julia went to the telephone and requested an ambulance. The doctors had an idea of what they were hunting for, but they couldn't get much information from the patient, who was trying to entertain them by doing his best impression of someone with "a tongue too big for his mouth," and chuckling.
Ultimately, when Roger was bundled into the ambulance, he was still clutching the black multi-colored afghan from the drawing room.
…..
"Barnabas," Hallie began tearfully, "May I speak with you?"
"Roger is going to be all right, I believe, Hallie. He just got sick. You must have been frightened to have been grabbed up like that."
"Yes," Hallie admitted, "and it was strange, because he was so hot—like a stove—and he was so angry. I could feel it," she shuddered, wiping a tear from her face.
"He'll be back soon and he'll be himself. The doctors will see what is wrong and give him some medicine. Are you all right?" he queried, leaning back and regarding her anew.
"N-no, well, I need some help, because David is gone, and he left me this note," Hallie confessed, handing the note to Barnabas. She bit back tears as he read.
"What's this, now? David went to the dumbwaiter? Why would he do that in the middle of the night?"
"You don't know about the wheel," Hallie exclaimed, and unhappily explained that the dumbwaiter compartment in the east wing had its own steering device, an unusually generous capacity for weight, and had come with what they'd taken as a written invitation to enter. "He's not in his room, and he isn't in the breakfast room, and he isn't in that east wing room, because I looked. And I checked the dumbwaiter in the kitchen and that's still there, and empty," she finished tearfully.
"Did you open the dumbwaiter door in the east wing? Perhaps he's sleeping in there."
"I didn't check," Hallie admitted, feeling like an idiot. "I just looked into the room."
"I'd better come with you and see," Barnabas decided. "Heaven help us if he's stuck somewhere."
They went together to the room in the east wing. Barnabas opened the dumbwaiter hatch and found the dumbwaiter gone. He quickly summoned it, using the cable. It seemed to have been lowered to the bottom of the house. It came up empty.
Barnabas frowned. He hadn't remembered the dumbwaiters of this house until Roger had mentioned them at dinner the night before. Now David was somewhere in the house, since this compartment was empty and Hallie had found the kitchen compartment similarly uninhabited. He thought quickly. David could not have fallen down the shaft, for he would have been lying on the top of the compartment they had just brought up. But could he have fallen into the shaft while the carriage was parked above? Possible. And had perhaps desperately grabbed one of the cables, dragging the compartment after him—
"Hallie," he began, turning to her, and she felt a pain in her chest at the concern in his eyes, "Can you please go to the Old House and get Willie and Julia and bring them here? I want to search the house. I'll get Mrs. Johnson and Harry, and we'll start. And please, as you go, call David's name everywhere outside, both ways, yes? And if you see anybody else on the way—your uncle, or Joe Haskell, or anyone you know—ask them to come too. We want to find David fast. I don't think," he hazarded, "that David would write a note like this and then hide from you the next morning as a joke."
Barnabas pressed David's note into her hands. "Show this to Julia and Willie. Go ahead. We'll find him," he concluded, trying to smile.
After Hallie had departed, Barnabas went immediately to Harry Johnson's room, which was empty. Hurrying down to the kitchen, however, he located both people he sought.
He set Harry and Mrs. Johnson the task of searching every room of the east wing, starting at the top of the house. He described the room that had the dumbwaiter in it. They were to search the entire wing, reporting any locked doors—David was famous for getting into locked places. Barnabas quickly took himself to the basement, trying to work out in his mind where the dumbwaiter hatches might be down there. He feared that David might have fallen down the shaft while the carriage was above and while reaching, perhaps, into the shaft below it to grasp the cable or something else. He knew that there was very little chance of such a thing; David was no fool; but the boy hadn't appeared for breakfast, and that, on top of the note he'd written, was enough to frighten Barnabas.
With a heavy kitchen flashlight, Barnabas searched the basement and easily found the dumbwaiter door panel below the kitchen. Try as he would, all his strength would not open the door. He banged his flashlight on it and shouted, "David!" but received no reply. That door was going to have to be forced open. What if David were lying behind it, injured?
Barnabas tried hard to locate the other dumbwaiter door. He had been a young man when this house was constructed, but he couldn't remember anything about the east wing dumbwaiters. Was it conceivable that David had located yet another one, in the west wing perhaps, and gone there to experiment? But the note was about the east wing—but—after he'd written the note, had he gone to the west wing nevertheless?
Barnabas grimly mounted the basement steps once more, and encountering nobody, began to search the first floor, shouting David's name.
…
Veronika Liska had accompanied Roger to the hospital and had been several hours delayed reporting to her clinic. Fortunately, her sisters, Panna and Connie, on being alerted, had reached everyone who had an appointment that morning and had rescheduled their visits. As a doctor, Veronika wouldn't simply hang around the hospital waiting to see how everything turned out; she was in consultation with the attending physicians, describing Roger's behavior, offering diagnoses, reading his test results. Once Roger's vital signs had stabilized and he had returned to a normal color, and had stopped his prodigious sweating and strange behavior, Veronika, after sitting with him for a little and reassuring him, had been obliged to depart and take up her own duties.
Elizabeth had found herself detained in a waiting room several hours until Roger had returned to normal, with Veronika visiting her every thirty endless minutes to reassure and update her.
"He hasn't had a stroke or heart attack or anything like that," she shared with Elizabeth. "I thought perhaps that it was a thyroid matter or a panic attack, but Julia felt right away that it was something anaphylactic—a terrible allergic reaction to something. His thyroid tests out fine. He wasn't intoxicated or taking a bad drug—his blood and urine are clean. He's practically back to normal now. I'm afraid we're just going to have to go over with him the events of the last 24 hours, find out where he'd been, what he'd touched, oh, anything out of the ordinary, however minute. Roger has no real food allergies, but perhaps he'd eaten something he didn't realize he was allergic to—or has never been allergic to before. I'm going to speak to the Coterie people, in case there was something in their coffee blend or in the omelet that might have triggered this, but apart from that—" she stopped and smiled, taking Elizabeth's hand. "The king's himself again. We're just going to have to quiz him and see if he recalls anything."
Elizabeth gripped Veronika's hand with both her own. "Thank God you were there and knew what to do. Let me say that anything my brother might have been yelling this morning is untrue. He rhapsodizes about you—you should hear him. Please forgive the things you heard today—he was not in his right mind."
Veronika patted Elizabeth's hands. "I know that," she smiled, her serious blue eyes looking into her future sister-in-law's with frankness. "I'll admit that he had me for a minute or two. Didn't know whether to give up the field to Julia, Hallie, or Barnabas! Or sock Roger in the jaw! But I don't think we'll have much more to worry us today. The IV he's on has swept whatever it was out of his system, and he'll stay here a few hours for observation. You can go in and see him. I've got to get to the clinic."
The women parted, and Elizabeth went into Roger's room.
Roger sat in bed in a hospital johnny, glowing with health as his sister entered.
"It can't be Coterie," he told her immediately, "I'll never believe that their breakfast touched this off, and all I had was toast. Elizabeth, what happened to me, did I pass out? I remember feeling strange, but nothing else. Did I collapse?"
Elizabeth sat down. In an ironic tone she uttered, "No, you did not." Then she quickly pressed her head against his blankets, and wept.
Shocked, touched, her brother reached for her hand. "Why, Liz," he chided softly. "I'm fine, lovey. I'll be home in a trice. Veronika says I have the heart of a steed. It wasn't a stroke, and if they'd only remove this IV line from my arm, I'd get dressed and walk out of here and show you how fit I am."
"Forgive me," breathed Elizabeth, gathering herself. "I was so frightened. Roger, you had us all absolutely horrified!"
"What on earth did I do—fall down and foam at the mouth? Tell me, I beg you. I have no recall."
She let him have it. Before she had finished speaking, his face had gone white. He threw the blankets from his legs and ordered, "Where are my clothes? I have to go to Veronika at once!"
She placed a cool hand on his arm. "You will do no such thing. You will stay here under observation until the hospital says otherwise. Veronika understands you better than you do yourself—both she and Julia immediately knew that you were seriously ill. Roger, I'm sure it was the dumbwaiter; it must have had dirt in it, or mold, or—someone even could have spilled anything in there, some sort of poison, a hundred years ago. It didn't occur to me until just this moment. I think the dumbwaiter is the element the doctors are looking for."
"But you were with me! You didn't become ill."
"How about the east wing? You opened the dumbwaiter door there, didn't you? I wasn't with you then. Do you remember, was there anything on the floor of the compartment? Some powder, perhaps?"
"The east wing? No. Well, there was an afghan in it that looks remarkably like that one," he commented, gesturing to a plain bureau in the room on which the black and multicolored afghan from Collinwood reposed, neatly folded. "Identical. I thought someone was playing a joke. But the afghan itself was clean, and not moldy or powdery or anything else like that. There was no odor when I removed it from the compartment."
"These dumbwaiters," Elizabeth mused. "They're the only really significant new thing that you've had any contact with that I can see. I'll phone Veronika. I'll tell the doctors! We will have to keep the children away from the dumbwaiters until they can be thoroughly cleaned or fumigated. Or perhaps there is mold in the shaft? Those spaces were sealed away from fresh air for a long time. Who knows what awful thing might have been growing in them?"