I frowned at the door after a couple of minutes. Maybe he was in the bathroom? I knocked again, this time putting my ear to the door to listen for sounds that he was willfully ignoring me.
There was no sound, but a scent wafted out from the doorjamb.
I sniffed a couple of times, then froze in horror. I knew that smell—it was natural gas, the stuff Bestwood used to heat up the ancient radiators that lurked in every room. What on earth was Alden doing turning on the heat when it had to be at least eighty during the day?
“Alden?” I banged loudly on the door, putting my face right up to it to yell. “Alden, what are you doing in there? Alden?”
There was still no answer, but as I gave a couple more sniffs, the smell of gas was still present.
What if he’d fallen down in the bathroom, and somehow turned on the gas while doing so? What if a gas pipe had broken and was expelling deadly fumes into his room at that very moment?
What if someone was trying to murder him in his sleep?
I spun around, and raced back into my room, running to the windowsill, where I flung open the curtains, jerked up the window, and stuck a leg out while feeling for the six-inch-wide decorative stone ledge that ran under all the windows on that floor. I eased myself out, refusing to look down, clutching the smooth stone of the building as I got to my feet.
“Don’t look down, don’t look down,” I repeated in a desperate sort of mantra, edging my way along the building to the window of Alden’s bathroom, which was between our two rooms. The mantra changed to, “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead,” when I (breathlessly) arrived at the window.
The urge to look down was almost overwhelming, but I kept my attention focused on staying balanced on the narrow ledge while bending down to pull up the window sash. Luckily, the heat of the day meant that Alden had left the bathroom window partially open, so all I had to do was grasp it with the hand not holding on to a decorative stone rose that dotted a line above the windows, and yank upward.
The smell of gas was strong—not overwhelming—in the bathroom, but the door to Alden’s room was firmly shut. I hopped down and, clutching the doorknob, jerked it open, staggering back almost immediately from the smell of gas. It made me cough, and almost retch. I ran for the bedroom window, pulling it open and sticking my upper half out, drawing in long, gasping breaths of untainted air. The second my head cleared, I spun around and stumbled over to where the radiator sat along the wall near the bed. I twisted the knob that turned on the flow of gas, gratified to hear the sibilant hissing die down to nothing before turning to Alden.
He was lying half on the bed, his legs on the floor, while his upper body had apparently melted onto the bed itself. No doubt he had tried to get up but was overcome by gas. I grabbed his arms, intending on carrying him out of the bedroom, but he was too big and heavy for me. Plus, I was holding my breath, and about to run out of air. I bolted to the window, took several painful gulps of air, and jerked the belt off Alden’s bathrobe that hung from the bathroom door.
Two more quick breaths of nondeadly air, and I was back at his side, tying the belt around his chest and under his arms. I wrapped both hands around the belt and started pulling him backward to the door to the hall, having to breathe about halfway there. By the time I got his body to the door, and turned the old-fashioned key that was sticking out of the lock, I was giddy, my throat burned, and I was close to vomiting. Fumbling with the door, I managed to get it open, and hauled Alden the last few feet until we hit the cool wood of the hallway. I kicked the door shut, sliding down it onto the floor next to him.
“Alden,” I said hoarsely, crawling over to him. “You have to wake up. I can’t carry you, and I doubt if I can drag you the entire way outdoors. You have to get up so we can get out of the house. Alden. Wake up.”
He lay still as death. Instantly, my brain rejected that thought, and I put a hand on his bare chest to make sure that its rising and falling weren’t just my imagination. Beneath my hand, his heart beat steadily, if a little slowly.
I had to get him some medical help. I ran back into his room to grab his cell phone, dialed the emergency number once I was back in the hall, and spent eight minutes of frustration describing to the call center where we were, why Alden needed help, and why the gas would be turned on during a summer heat wave.
“Look,” I finally said, uncaring if I was being rude, “I don’t know why the gas was on, but I’m sure it wasn’t a suicide attempt, and I don’t know why you insist on arguing with me about how and why gas was turned on so that it almost killed Alden, when you should be sending medical aid!”
“Madam,” the woman on the other end said with cool indifference. “The paramedics were sent five minutes ago. I am merely trying to get additional information for the council. They like us to document regional emergencies so that they know better how to allocate funds designated for such events. You say this was not a suicide attempt, but how are you certain of that? Are you a family member?”
“No, I’m . . . I suppose you could say I’m his girlfriend. And what does that have to do with—”
“Would you say that this emergency is one that could be avoided with proper in-home safety measures?”
“No! Someone tried to kill Alden—”
“Would you agree that the city council has an obligation to investigate homes to ensure they are up to code, and that every protection is in place to eliminate the possibility of future emergencies?”
I hung up the phone, and stood staring down at Alden. I wanted desperately to go wait at the entrance of the house for the medics, but I didn’t want to leave him alone, lest the murderous Lisa be lurking somewhere.
I ran back to my bedroom, leaving the door open so I’d see if she tried to creep past in order to get to Alden, and hurried into the nearest thing I could find—my blue archery dress. After a moment’s thought, I snatched the duvet off the bed and laid it down next to Alden, rolling him over onto it with a murmured apology. “Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t move you, but I can’t leave you here for Lisa to find, and I have to be downstairs to let the paramedics in, so you have to come with me. Ready?”
Grasping the edge of the duvet firmly, I backed my way down the hallway, dragging Alden with me. It wasn’t easy getting him down the stairs (at one point, he slid off the duvet and rolled down a couple of steps), but fifteen minutes later I triumphantly opened the front door to the two women waiting, and said in between gasps, “Hi . . . so glad . . . you’re here. . . . He’s over there. . . . Got a few bumps . . . on stairs . . . whew!”
The paramedics said nothing, just pushed past me and knelt next to where Alden was crumpled up on the now somewhat torn and dirty duvet. A zigzagging line of little white feathers led across the hall to the stairs, ending at the spot where a hitherto unknown carpet tack had snagged the duvet and torn it, releasing its guts in a snowy trail.
“You’d think it was easy pulling a man on a blanket, but it’s not,” I said while the women worked on Alden, slapping an oxygen mask over his mouth, and listening to his heart. One of them peered closely at a lump over his left eye. “Oh, yeah, that. It has nothing to do with the gas thing, I’m afraid. He rolled off the blanket and hit the banister when I was dragging him downstairs. You can see that the bump isn’t bleeding, so I figured he’ll just have a black eye. It’s his brain I’m worried about. Gas poisoning can mess with that, can’t it? Is he going to be OK?”
Alden started coming to while I was speaking, his arms and legs doing an odd swimming motion for a few seconds before he reached up and tried to take the oxygen mask off. “Sir, please do not move,” one of the women told him, while the other leaned over him and asked, “Do you remember your name?”
“Of course I remember my name,” Alden said, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask. He winced as he spoke, reaching up to touch his bruised brow. “What happened to me?”
“It’s O
K, Alden,” I said, peering over the shoulder of one of the paramedics, who was taking his blood pressure. “You’re all right now. Sorry about your head, but I didn’t want to leave you where Lisa could get you. These are paramedics. They’re here to help you.”
“Why are you . . . ow . . . talking to me like I’m an imbecile?” he asked, touching his nose.
“Sorry about that, too. You and the duvet slid down part of the stairs, and your nose kind of kerthumped on each step. Oh, good, you’re going to take him to the hospital?” This last was in response to one of the medics, who had fetched a wheeled gurney.
“The patient appears to be somewhat disoriented,” one of the medics said. The two of them lifted the blanket, and hauled Alden onto the gurney. “He needs to be checked over thoroughly.”
“I like that—yes, he should be checked over thoroughly,” I said, following as they wheeled him out to the aid unit. “I’ll come with you.”
“I’m sorry, family only,” one of the medics said, locking the wheels of the gurney inside the truck.
“Oh. Crap. OK, I’ll take his car. Alden! They’re going to take you to the hospital! To see a doctor! But you’re OK. Don’t worry about anything—just breathe nice clear oxygen.”
“I don’t know why she’s speaking to me as if I’m three years old,” Alden complained to one of the medics. “I seem to have a second lump on the back of my head now.”
“Sorry! That was the big heavy chair just at the bottom of the stairs. I lost control of the duvet and you, so you kind of swung into it,” I yelled just as the second medic closed the door.
I stood wringing my hands for a few seconds, watching as the truck zoomed off, then realized I needed to get to the hospital to make sure he was all right.
Once back in his room, I grabbed his laptop case, and stuffed into it a change of clothes (since he had been clad in nothing but his underwear when I dragged him downstairs), a pair of shoes, his phone, car keys, and wallet, and, after a moment’s thought, crammed in his laptop, so that I’d have something to do while I waited for the doctors to run their tests. I wanted to document the event, and since I knew Alden was keeping a journal of all the various repairs he was having to make—along with the parts of the house that fell off, crumbled away, or, in the case of the gallery floor, were sabotaged—I decided to add my own notes about Lisa’s attempt on Alden’s life to his house document.
The night crawled into morning, an ugly, gray morning that accurately reflected my state of mind while I sat in the hospital waiting room, typing away everything that had happened since I’d come back from dinner with Fenice and Vandal. I made a particular point to list every possible opportunity that Lisa had to facilitate the “accidents,” and even went so far as to pose a few speculations as to what reasons I thought she would have to want Alden dead.
An hour before dawn, I was allowed to visit him.
“Alden!” I hurried past the other patient in his room, who was half-hidden by a privacy curtain, and threw myself onto Alden where he sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his clothing out of the laptop bag. “Tell me you’re all right! The doctor said you were, but I want to hear it from you, too. Holy crapballs, Alden! You look like hell!”
“Thanks,” he said, touching the bump over his eye, which was bright red due to an ice pack that lay discarded next to him. “I feel like hell, although I guess that’s good, since it means I’m alive. No, don’t stop kissing me. I’m not that bad.”
I continued kissing every spot on his face that wasn’t bruised or scratched, ending at his lips. He groaned into my mouth, causing me to jerk back. “Did I hurt you? Is your mouth sore? I checked your teeth and they were all there, so I assumed nothing had been hurt, but if I’m hurting you, tell me.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” he said with a rusty chuckle. “I was just enjoying the kiss.”
“Oh, good.” I gave him one more quick peck, then stood back, eyeing him. His color was much better than when I’d rescued him, and although the bump over his eye was red, and he was starting to show a darkish halo that foretold at least a partial black eye, he looked relatively hale and hearty. “I was so worried.”
“So I gather.” He reached for his jeans, carefully putting them on. “I still don’t understand exactly what happened. All the doctor would tell me was that there was some sort of incident with the radiator, and that you’d pulled me out and then thrown me down a flight of stairs. He asked if I wanted to talk to the police, in order to file charges against you.”
“Well, I like that!” I handed him his shirt. “Here I go to all the trouble of saving you from certain death by asphyxiation, or gas poisoning, or whatever it is that too much gas does to you, and he asks you if you want to call the cops on me.”
“What did happen?” he asked, grimacing when he bent to put on a shoe.
I went over the events, apologizing numerous times when I explained how he came to have the various bumps and bruises. “You’re not the easiest person in the world to move when you’re unconscious,” I ended, gently brushing back his curls. They didn’t need moving, but I liked touching his hair, and it just made me feel better to fuss over him.
“I imagine not.” He stood, wobbled a little, but steadied almost immediately. “I guess I’d better call a plumber about the faulty gas line.”
“Faulty, my ass. That was no accident,” I said, frowning when he pulled his phone out of the bag. “Oh, I turned that off. Your battery was almost dead.”
“Thank you.” He turned on the phone and did an experimental stretch. “I know you think the worst about Lisa, but you have to admit that it’s highly unlikely that she would be so spurned by the fact that I have picked you over her that she’d try to gas me. Good lord. I have twelve messages. I wonder what—”
He held the phone up to his ear as he hit his voice mail button.
“I don’t think it’s because you spurned her,” I told him. I put the laptop back into its bag. “In fact, I have a list of items that I think explain her actions. . . . What’s wrong?”
I could hear the faint tinny sound of a voice talking on the voice mail, and as it stopped and another, more urgent started up, Alden’s face changed from one of mild bemusement to outright horror. “Alden?”
“The house,” he said, his eyes huge. “The house is on fire.”
“What? Holy hellballs!” I leaned in to listen to the phone with him, and heard snatches of first Vandal, and then Fenice, yelling into the phone that Alden needed to let them know he was all right, and that the house was fully engulfed.
If there was a record for two people to run out of a third-floor hospital room, down to the parking lot, and into a car, then we broke it, because I swear we didn’t even have time to blink before I was struggling to unlock the car.
“I’ll drive,” I told him, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Do you have a license?”
“Not for the UK, but I know how to drive.”
“Mercy—,” he started to protest, but I leaned across and opened the passenger door.
“You just got released from the hospital. Now get in the car and let me drive you home!”
“If there’s any home left,” he said grimly, but did as I ordered, and got into the passenger seat.
I said nothing, but sent up a prayer to every deity I could think of to preserve Bestwood Hall.
Chapter 16
It was worse than we could have imagined.
I watched Alden as he stumbled away from speaking with the fire chief, his face gilded red and gold by the light of the fire as it consumed his house. The fire trucks had given up trying to stop the blaze in the house—it was fully engulfed, thick oily black clouds rolling upward into what otherwise appeared to be a flawless morning sky. Instead, they sprayed the nearby trees, the garden, and the outbuildings, soaking them so that stray embers wouldn’t spread the fire.
>
“I didn’t think a stone building could burn like that,” I said in an undertone to Fenice, who stood huddled with Lisa, Vandal, and Alec (the last of whom had arrived once he heard about the fire).
“The stone was only on the outside, I guess,” Fenice said, casting a worried look at the outbuildings near the garden. “I feel terrible for Alden. What’s he going to do?”
“I have no idea.” I rubbed my arms against the chill of the early morning air. What should have been a crisp, clean morning had turned into one filled with the scent of smoke, small bits of ash drifting to the ground, and a profound sense of sadness at watching such a historic building be destroyed.
“I’d better go check on the gear to make sure none of the water the firemen are using is getting inside our buildings.” Fenice patted me on the arm. “Give Alden our sympathy, will you? I can’t imagine how devastated he’s feeling right now.”
“He is, but he’s also grateful that no one was hurt.” I shook my head, marveling at how things had turned out. “At the time, I thought he was way off base kicking everyone out of the house, but now I’m intensely thankful he did.”
“Likewise,” she said, giving me another pat before hurrying off to remind the firemen that the buildings nearest the garden were being used.
While Fenice and I had been talking, Lisa had moved over to where Alden stood, leaning in close to him while she spoke. He didn’t react to her, or what she was saying, so I gathered he was so stunned by the fire that he simply could not cope with her.
One look at his face as I approached told me I was correct.
“—know it’s hard to find the good in something bad, but really, there is some good to this. You’re insured, naturally, which means you’ll get just oodles of money. Enough to let you buy a house somewhere else. Maybe even another historic house, one you could do little fixes to, you know? Just so you have the satisfaction of making it your own.”