The Corpse with the Silver Tongue Read Free

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.
    â€œWe 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.
    â€œSure—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