A Healthy Place to Die

by Peter King

  The pattern was getting more and more sinister too. For two bodies to be removed from the spa cast a strong suspicion on the staff. Was Caroline de Witt masterminding some plot, aided by some of the blond staff beauties? A less likely place for such a thing to be happening was hard to imagine. A respectable spa, widely known and with prominent clients? Absurd. …

  A voice cut through the clear air. I realized that I was standing there, dripping lake water and getting chilled to the bone. The voice was not too close and had no tinge of urgency in it. I waited, then went over to the outdoor herb garden, its colors faintly tinted in the light of a moon that was sliding out from behind the Alpine peaks to the north.

  I had a wider vista from here, and in the dim light I could make out three or four figures making their way back to the main buildings. Two or three of them were talking now. They must have come from the hydrotherapy units, and that gave me an idea. I didn’t want to go back into the main building area looking like something dragged in from the lake—even if I was. In the hydrotherapy center, several of the buildings had racks of white terrycloth robes. I could take one of those and be less conspicuous.

  The lure of water therapy was proving popular. Several people were coming and going and I had to be alert, but I managed to grab a robe, crumple up my sodden clothes into a bundle, and carry them under my arm. As I walked back to the main building, all seemed calm and peaceful. I recalled a previous occasion—I had been looking for Kathleen’s body and I had been unable to understand why no alarm had gone out then.

  Was this going to be the same?

  Pools of orange light lit the approaches to the main buildings of the spa. As I walked toward the nearest building, I encountered Marta Giannini and Axel Vorstahl out for a stroll.

  “Aha,” Axel said, “getting some water treatment?”

  “I think I’ve had all of that I can stand for today,” I said.

  I was aware that they were both looking with amusement at the bundle of wet clothes under my arm, dripping water.

  “I had another mud bath,” Marta said gaily.

  “It has made you look radiant,” I assured her.

  They walked on, and I hastily made my way back to my chalet and temporary security. This place was getting to be dangerous.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE FIRST THING I did was to call Janet’s room. As I had expected, there was no answer. I took a shower and let the hot spray pummel my body. This was too much. Two women, both appearing dead—but were they? Both disappearing? Or had they? Well, Kathleen certainly had disappeared and it would be only a short time before it would be clear if Janet had disappeared also.

  They both worked on the same magazine … that was the odd coincidence that was probably not a coincidence at all. It must be a key to these bizarre happenings. So why were they happening here?

  After breaking out of the greenhouse, I had toyed around with the idea that Caroline de Witt was pursuing some criminal plan, but the more I examined that idea, the more absurd it seemed. What plan could possibly be operating in a spa, especially one as popular as this? It was true that cover-ups would be easier for staff members to arrange, but I could not rule out the possibility that guests were responsible. At least that possibility applied to Kathleen’s “disappearance,” but now with Janet’s “disappearance”—if that was what it turned out to be—some more elaborate explaining by the management was going to be needed.

  A big hole in one glass wall of the greenhouse, for example. The reaction to this suddenly appearing aperture would be a signpost along the road to solving the puzzle.

  Drinking time before dinner had been severely eroded, and by the time I emerged from the soothingly hypnotic influence of the hot shower and dressed, it was the dinner hour.

  I went through the lobby again as before, taking the temperature. Once again, it was normal. Everyone was going about their business as if nothing had happened. Staff members sauntered or scurried about, attending to their tasks just as they always did. Guests asked at the desk about messages or at the cashier’s office about currency or banking transactions. The fax machine was in demand, with missives flying in and out. Phones rang, were answered, and voices filled the air. As to anything out of the ordinary—nothing, absolutely nothing.

  Every time the main door opened and someone came in, I expected to see a man in uniform. None appeared. I saw one of the blond staff girls passing through, and after a brief study of her walk, I concluded it was Julia. She came closer, and I confirmed the identification. She smiled as I greeted her.

  “Busy as always, I see. Still shorthanded?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “but we all enjoy our work.”

  “This vandalism hasn’t caused you more work, has it?”

  She looked puzzled. “Vandalism?”

  “There’s a rumor that there was a break-in at the greenhouse.”

  “Oh, that … it’s just a rumor. One of the gardeners tried to drive a mower out and the controls stuck. He ran into the glass wall.”

  So that was the party line. I went into the dining room. Oriana Frascati and Michel Leblanc were my immediate companions. “Are you contemplating a Swiss cookbook?” I asked Oriana. She had her hair swept back and looked quite attractive in a severe way. “Or is there one already?” I added.

  “In Switzerland, there are several, but a book on Swiss cooking written in English? Nothing recent has been published.”

  “Is that because there are not considered to be enough Swiss dishes?”

  “Probably,” she said.

  “Swiss chard and Swiss rolls don’t count?”

  As a spot check on her sense of humor, it worked well enough. She smiled. “After Geschneltes, it’s hard to find as many as are needed to fill a book. The favorite dishes of the Swiss are all claimed by the French, Germans, and Italians.”

  The stuffed green olives that had been my choice of the first course arrived, super colossal size, and the stuffing tasted like a mix of sausage and veal. Michel had a stir-fried hot and sour cabbage salad, and Oriana chose a zucchini risotto.

  Michel Leblanc leaned across to address Oriana. “It must be getting harder to find new approaches for cookbooks.”

  “It is. We’ve even exhausted the noncooking cookbooks.”

  Michel looked puzzled. His English was excellent but it was easy to understand why that expression baffled him. Oriana smiled as she saw his expression.

  “We’ve been having a flood of them for some time. “The I Hate to Cook Book, I Can’t Boil Water, and Fifteen-Minute Meals”

  Michel smiled and nodded. “Ah, I see. Books for beginners. That is good.”

  “Then we had the humorous cookbooks,” said Oriana. She rattled off a list that included Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen, Gourmet Cooking for Dummies, and Desperation Dinners.

  My ploy was working well. Now I was able to turn to Michel Leblanc. “Have you written any cookbooks, Michel?”

  “No, I have not. Many articles for magazines and newspapers but not any books.”

  “Magazines? Ah, of course; yes,” I said, “I was just trying to remember where I had seen your articles. One was in Good Food, wasn’t it?”

  Michel hadn’t mentioned any television appearances, but if he had made any, they hadn’t sharpened any latent acting ability. He looked down at his plate, reached for the salt (which he didn’t need), and said in an uncertain voice, “No, I haven’t, er, been in that magazine.”

  “You’re going to be in a future issue then?” I asked. “Didn’t I hear Kathleen Evans say something about working with you on it?”

  Mentioning her name seemed to embarrass him. “No, we haven’t discussed it.”

  “So what were you talking about in the Roman baths?” was the next question, but I didn’t want to ask it at the dinner table. I compromised with, “She’s a good food writer, isn’t she?”

  He mumbled what might have been a grudging agreement, but it trailed away and Oriana was saying, “We h
ave a book in preparation with favorite recipes of famous chefs. Perhaps we can get you to contribute to that?” Michel grabbed eagerly at this lifeline, and the arrival of the entrée brought a halt to the conversation. I had selected the fritto misto, tiny fillets of lake fish that are found commonly in Swiss lakes—perch, trout, pike—and served with basil mayonnaise on the side. Michel was having a pork stew, which probably had Hungarian origins, and Oriana explained her choice with “I’ve been hungering for a steak all week. Just a simple one with a green salad.”

  I was pondering my next ploy when Oriana handed it to me—on a plate. “The food here really is excellent,” she commented.

  “It is,” I agreed. “We must congratulate the chef—yet again.” I put down my fork and gave a plausible impression of having been struck with an idea. “In fact, the food is so good that you should talk to Leighton about a cookbook.”

  “I did,” said Oriana, attacking her steak with gusto. “He said no.”

  “Really?” I was sincerely puzzled. “I would have thought he’d leap at the chance.”

  “He doesn’t even want to contribute a recipe.”

  Silence didn’t exactly fall as the sounds of happy eating continued, but it was an additional fact to add to the complex picture of such a potentially great chef. Was he shy about publicity? He didn’t seem to be shy in other regards.

  I tried not to let these conundrums spoil my meal. They didn’t. The fritto misto was perfect, just crunchy enough but not laden with batter. The basil mayonnaise had been made with a light touch, and as this was a Swiss dish I decided on a Swiss wine and ordered a vin fletri. In France, such wines are known as vins de paille. The word paille means straw, and the wines are so named because the grapes are laid out on beds of straw to dry out. This can increase the sugar content, and the French version is more of an after-dinner wine, but the waiter assured me that the Swiss version is lighter and drier. And so it was.

  A slice of what the French call “the embroidered melon” completed the meal. The raised, lighter-colored network on the rind gives this melon its name. It is called a canteloupe in the United States, a situation complicated further by the fact that what Europe calls a canteloupe is not grown commercially in the United States.

  After the meal, though, the questions kept coming into my mind. Two women had disappeared. Both might be dead. In my search for clues, a name had come unbidden to the top of the heap—a name that should have occurred to me sooner when I considered who might be able to contribute some meaning … Carver Armitage.

  I might be doing him an injustice in suspecting him of knowing more than he had told me. Perhaps he had been intending to come to the spa and talk about food. Perhaps he had tried to get others to replace him and couldn’t. I recalled that the universal surprise in finding me at the spa was really surprise that Carver Armitage was not there. But perhaps also—just perhaps—there might be more to it than that.

  From the public phone, I called St. Giles’s Hospital in London. A string of helpful voices bounced me round a circuit before I was talking to Sister Blackstone. She had an ice-encrusted voice and an Arctic manner. She must strike terror into the hearts of the nursing staff, I thought, and her patients must dread the sound of her approaching footsteps. Certainly, Baron Victor Frankenstein would never have selected her as his assistant on that fateful night when thunder clapped and lightning flashed through the dome of the castle laboratory—he would have feared that she would terrify his creation.

  “Mr. Armitage?” she repeated. “Yes, he was under my care.”

  Poor fellow, I thought, he’ll never be the same again. I said, “Isn’t he still there in the hospital?”

  “Of course not. We discharged him some days ago.”

  “I thought he was going be there another week?” I said.

  “Certainly not,” she said firmly. “Not for such a minor matter.”

  Minor to you maybe, I thought, but for Carver a matter of great importance.

  “Was his treatment, er, successful?” I asked, trying to keep our line of communication open.

  “We considered alternate treatments,” she said loftily. “Amputation was one of them but—”

  “Amputation!”

  I probably groaned.

  “It wasn’t a serious matter,” her flinty tones told me. “He wouldn’t have missed it.”

  She must have heard me gulp. “I don’t know him really well,” I explained, “but I think he would have considered himself disastrously incapacitated had you used the knife on him.”

  She sniffed. It is not easy to convey a volume of meaning in a sniff, but she did it admirably. I didn’t need to ask in order to know that she did not agree with me.

  “So how did you treat him?” I asked.

  Her voice hardened, if that were possible. “I must question your authority to ask such questions over the telephone. Just who are you? Are you a doctor?”

  “I’m his half brother,” I ad-libbed. “I just came back from Zimbabwe.”

  “Zimbabwe?” she repeated, and skepticism dripped out of the telephone.

  “You probably call it Rhodesia—us old hands do most of the time.”

  “In that case, you should call Mr. Armitage and ask him these questions.”

  “We’ve sort of lost touch—you know how it is.” There was no answer. Apparently she didn’t know. I went on, “Besides, matters of a sensitive nature such as this require delicate handling even between half brothers.”

  “Sensitive! Delicate! What’s sensitive or delicate about a painful end joint, little finger, left hand?”

  Was this jaunty hospital jargon? I wondered. Euphemisms of the profession?

  “He was in the impotence ward, wasn’t he?”

  The silence that followed could have swallowed an Alp.

  “For a little finger?” Her scorn would have daunted the Russian army. “No, he came in for an examination. He left before noon.”

  “Did his doctor send him?” I asked.

  “Of course not. He came in of his own accord.”

  My mind was spinning. Carver had admitted himself to St. Giles for a miniscule matter that sounded like a hangnail and called me at that time. I had to admit that it was a great way to get sympathy, especially the “male thing,” which guarded against probing questions.

  “Thank you, Sister,” I said weakly, and hung up the phone.

  So Carver had wanted me to come here in his place. He had gone to some lengths to make sure that I did so.

  Had he wanted me to get killed in his place?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HOW DO YOU INVESTIGATE when there is nowhere to go? No doubt real detectives would know what to do. With vast armies of men and women, inexhaustible files and highly ingenious computers, they find a score of avenues to explore. But a food detective like me … I was always explaining to people that I’m not a detective at all, really. Now I had to believe it.

  Two missing women and two attempts on my life—maybe three. Must be enough clues there, somewhere. … Even the fictional detectives would be able to find them. If Sherlock Holmes were involved, he would be puffing on his pipe. Lord Peter Wimsey would be gazing at one of his rose beds, Nero Wolfe would be seeking inspiration in a bottle of beer, whereas Mike Hammer would be pounding his fists into a face, any face. No help to be found there. I didn’t smoke a pipe, didn’t own a Ming vase, liked beer but didn’t find inspiration in it, and abhorred pugilistics.

  Carver Armitage’s antics baffled me too. Getting me to feel sorry for him and then dispatching me here where I would be a target for assassination was not friendly behavior. It was true we were not exactly friends, but it was not the behavior to use even with acquaintances.

  It was the next morning, and I was feeling frustrated. Breakfast had not helped the mental processes, and I had a couple of hours before the morning session was to start. Plenty of time to find clues—if only I knew how.

  “Ask questions” was the only useful piece of advi
ce I could give myself. It lacked brilliance, I admitted. It might be dangerous, I warned myself. Initially, there was only one place to start. I went to the public phone and called Carver’s number in London. There was no answer, and his answering machine did not even respond.

  I went to the reception desk. Monique was not on duty this time. It was a very young man with slicked-down hair. He had a Swiss-German accent and was trying to grow a mustache with very little sign of success. I used the same ploy as before.

  “Is there a message for me?” I gave him my name and when the inevitable head shake came, I frowned in disappointment. “That’s strange. I had a breakfast appointment with Janet Hargrave and she didn’t show up. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find her.”

  He was eager to help. He called her room and got no answer. He pushed keys on the computer, looked surprised, then said, “Just a moment” and went to the cashier’s desk. It was a rerun all the way. When he came back, he said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Miss Hargrave checked out.”

  “How did she go?”

  It was the same answer as with Kathleen. “A taxi to the airport.”

  Behind me, a voice said in an incredulous tone, “Janet Hargrave’s left?”

  It was Elaine. She was wearing a yellow-and-white shirt and white slacks, looking more appropriately dressed for lunch on the lawn than for the upcoming cooking presentation.

  Yes, she has, I told her.

  She looked perplexed. “That’s abrupt, isn’t it?”

  “Very. You’ve been talking to her?”

  “Yes.” She looked around. It was not a furtive movement, for she was not a furtive person by any means. Still, she obviously didn’t want any eavesdroppers and that made me very curious. She moved away from reception and so did I. She wouldn’t be easy to grill, but maybe I could learn something if I employed all the techniques that I recalled from both real and fictional detectives.