Page 14 of Murder Will Out
Willow looked up in surprise at the slim man with his dark suit and neat silvery beard. “It’s you,” she said awkwardly. “You were in the church, at Aunt Sue’s memorial.”
Geralt started. He had not expected this. He shot a piercing look at Willow. “You saw him at the church today?” he asked, trying to still the tremors in his hands and legs and failing.
Willow nodded. “He sat in the choir loft. For a little while.”
The man said, with a hint of reluctance, “I arrived late and stayed upstairs so as not to draw attention.” He descended the stairs and turned to Willow. “Apparently, I was unsuccessful. Myname is Joel Drummond; I managed Miss Effie’s and Dr. Davis’s affairs while they lived, and of course, I worked with them on historical society matters.” He paused. “Please accept my condolences for your loss. You are Miss Stone, Susan’s… niece, are you not?” he said.
Willow managed a small smile. “Honorary niece only. Sue was my godmother.”
Joel nodded, a speculative look in his eye. “I see. She mentioned you might be coming to the island soon.”
At that moment, Geralt burst into a paroxysm of coughing, and then retching, as he clutched his stomach, face contorting in a rictus of tension and pain.
Joel hurried over to him, feeling for Geralt’s thready pulse. “Miss Stone, do you have a telephone?”
Geralt was dimly aware of the voices around him. They were trying to manage him again. Everyone was always trying to manage him.
“The battery died. I was on my way home to charge it. Does the house have a landline?”
“We had it shut off after Miss Effie died; Dr. Davis used her cell phone.” Joel turned to Geralt and spoke directly into his face, trying to make the old man understand him. “You are not well, sir. We will help you into the sitting room to lie down, and Miss Stone will go seek medical assistance. And you will let us.”
“For God’s sake, I’m right here. No need to shout.” Jesus, his head hurt. No one had told him high blood pressure would make his head hurt like this. It probably wasn’t even his blood pressure—he was dehydrated, that was it. When did he last have water? In a thick, blurry voice, he said, “I’m thirsty. I’m supposed to drink lots of water…” He vaguely realized his hand was jerking uncontrollably, and then his whole arm. His cane fell to the floor, the glass knob shattering and throwing sharp fragments around the room.
“Dammit,” he slurred. “I liked that cane.”
He was dimly aware of words between Willow and Joel, but he couldn’t make them make sense, and everything was unraveling. His head throbbed. He couldn’t catch his breath. His heart pounded in his chest, thick and uneven. Then he was being lifted between the two of them; he had a few seconds of clarity, able to keep his feet moving under his body as they carefully maneuvered him across the hall. He stopped in the archway, gazing at the wooden rocking chair in the window, sea-blue afghan draped over the back. He remembered his Aunt Effie crocheting that afghan, and he remembered how she used to bake snickerdoodle cookies. The sweet-warm fragrance of cinnamon and fresh butter wafted into his senses as though she were baking them now, as the chair moved slowly back and forth, back and forth.
How could he have forgotten the cookies?
Aunt Effie, from her seat in the rocker, turned her face and smiled at him gently—at the little boy he had been, as though it were his childhood self who stood before her and not the grouchy old sinner he had become.
He blinked, and she was gone.
At least it had been her and not the other one.
Willow’s voice. “Please, Mr. Talbot, it’s only a little farther; let’s get you safely lying down, and then I’ll go for help. You need a doctor, you know you do—”
“I’m fine!” he roared, summoning the last of his will and strength to find and assemble, if for the last time, the fiery exterior he was committed to showing the world. “Leave me alone! When it’s my time, it’s my time. No need to make a fuss over me. Leave me be. Leave me—” He gasped and slid to the floor, Willow and Joel helping to ease him down to a seated position without hurting himself.
Geralt’s breath was shallow and fast, his arms and legs shaking uncontrollably now. In a sudden spasm, he groaned and doubled over, curling up in the fetal position and retching. Then hevomited, convulsively expelling most of the food and lemonade he had consumed throughout the afternoon in a flood of foulness.
He realized he was very possibly going to die. If not today, then soon.
Geralt Talbot had never seriously considered the idea of dying before. He did not much like it.
CHAPTER TEN
Willow felt paralyzed, kneeling beside the stricken old man curled in the fetal position at the base of the staircase. Nine years of research and musicology study had prepared her for exactly nothing connected to the lives of the living people around her; she felt more useless than ever before in her life.
The dark-suited man reached across Geralt’s gasping body and gently touched her shoulder, then her cheek. His eyes caught hers and held them—dark eyes, so dark the pupils were almost invisible, older than the rest of him, eyes that would notice everything. But they were also, somehow, kind, and his voice was calm and reassuring.
She forced her brain to process what the voice was saying. “There’s a linen closet in the kitchen, to the right of the door. You’ll find some towels.”
Towels. It was something.
Willow burst into action. Among table linens and cleaning supplies were several neatly folded stacks of once-bright terry cloth, now old and faded and reduced to mopping up spills. She grabbed a pile of the towels and came back to where Geraltlay, slipping a couple of them under his head for comfort and spreading out another to sop up his sick. He shifted a little as she gently wiped the corners of his mouth, then he gave a shuddering sigh.
If he had been pale before, now he was positively waxen, his complexion a grayish white, a delicate tracing of veins visible in the translucent skin of his closed eyelids. He was shaking; she could not tell if he was cold or seizing, but on impulse, after removing the soiled towel and tossing it to the side with most of the mess it had soaked up, Willow darted into the sitting room and picked up the sea-blue shawl draped over the back of Effie’s rocking chair.
