The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  They chatted as they wrapped themselves in towels and walked carefully across the wet tiles. Then they stepped out onto the hardwood floor that led to the dressing rooms.

  Suddenly one howled in pain, started to dance on one foot, and screamed again. She steadied herself by leaning on her friend, lifted a foot, and saw that she was bleeding. She screamed again, this time in outrage. There were small pieces of glass scattered across the floor. He friend backed away to keep from cutting her own feet. Then she joined in the screaming, as the two women loudly demanded the manager.

  An attendant, dressed in gym clothes, came running and listened to the shouted complaints about the broken glass. She began apologizing profusely, used a towel to cover the glass, and helped the women step across. It was an afterthought that made her glance around for the source of the problem, and by luck she saw the cracked window in the sauna door. Only then did she notice that the night lock, used to secure the room after hours, was in the locked position.

  She sorted through her key ring, found the key, and opened the lock, struggling against the pressure from inside the door. When it was free, the door swung open. The three women gasped as a bloodied naked body toppled out across the threshold. The attendant ran for help. One of the women knelt next to Jane and felt for a pulse. She looked at the other and nodded sadly.

  The emergency medical team arrived within minutes, used an electrical device to shock her heart back to a steady rhythm, bandaged her cut arm sufficiently to stop the bleeding, and wheeled her away on a gurney. Jane never stirred as she was bounced across the sidewalk and lifted into a waiting ambulance. Not even the high-pitch warble of the siren was able to wake her.

  When the light came, it came slowly, a faint flicker that grew into a pewter-colored glow. There were sounds, voices that seemed to be playing at too slow a speed. Then someone was calling her name. Jane tried to answer, but she couldn’t. There was something covering her face.

  She opened her eyes and saw shadows moving around her, all faceless and with bodies that rippled like reflections in a pond. They were speaking to one another, but in a strange language she couldn’t understand. And there was one form, leaning close to her face, that kept calling her name, but she didn’t remember how to answer. Besides, her head ached as if it might explode. It was easier to close her eyes and drift back off to sleep.

  The next time she was conscious, the light seemed to have more color and the voices had a natural pace. She recognized the strange language she had heard. The people around her were speaking French. Of course! She remembered that she had been visiting France. She saw faces staring down at her, a man and a woman. “Jane,” the woman said. The man smiled. She tried to answer, but the mask was pressed over her face. She moved her eyes and noticed the clear plastic piece that covered her nose. The best she could do was smile back.

  There was a flurry of activity, with people running in and out. Her bed was raised up a bit, and the mask was replaced with a small plastic tube that rested over her lip. She noticed that her right arm was connected to a medical drip and that there were electrodes attached to her body. She was in a hospital, she understood, and the people racing in and out of the room were trying to save her.

  Jane began to remember, but with no great clarity. She could envision the sauna with the jammed door, and she remembered pounding on it and trying to force it open. There was something about glass, but she wasn’t sure what. And the heat! She remembered breathing hot air and feeling that her skin was about to burst into flames. But then what? Had she forced the door open? Had she walked out? She couldn’t remember.

  Bill was standing at the foot of the bed. But how did he get there? Jane was positive that he hadn’t been there a second ago. He was smiling at her. He came around to the side of the bed and took her hand. She liked the way he felt.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right.” She wasn’t sure what he was talking about. What was going to be all right? But it didn’t seem all that important. The important thing was that she was dead tired. She closed her eyes and hoped that the voices would go away.

  When she next woke up, things made sense right away. She was in the hospital. She had been rescued from the hellish room and brought here. Now she was recovering. But recovering from what? What had the heat done to her that the doctors were working so hard to fix? She sat awake for an hour, examining the monitors that were on the wall over her head. Several different traces were running across two different screens. One of them was beeping at regular intervals. Every few minutes a cuff tightened around her arm and numbers scrolled on another display. A nurse came into the room, stuck a thermometer in her ear, and held her wrist. “What’s wrong with me?” Jane asked. The nurse answered in French, which told her nothing at all.

  Her memory was coming back. She remembered how she had cut her arm by pushing it through the shattered window. The burns on her hands reminded her of her efforts to use one of the fiery rocks to break the glass. She remembered throwing herself against the door and pounding on it with her fists. But she had no recollection of how she had gotten out. Did she finally succeed in breaking free, or had she attracted the attention of someone outside? And how did she get to the hospital? She didn’t remember being in a car.

  Bill came in, rushed to her bedside, and kissed her cheeks. She fell easily into his embrace and then found that she was crying. He eased her back onto the pillow and told her that she needed to conserve her strength.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she asked again.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “You’re absolutely perfect.”

  Jane looked at the wires linking her to the monitors and then glanced back at her husband. “What happened to me?”

  “Dehydration … heat stroke … burns. You scared the hell out of us.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “You’re breathing oxygen and taking medication. You need fluids and bed rest. They’re monitoring your heart even though it’s behaving perfectly. And, oh yeah, you have a couple of stitches in your arm.”

  “How did I get out?”

  He told her about the two women who had cut their feet on the glass.

  “Why wouldn’t the door open?” she wanted to know.

  “It was locked. There’s a deadbolt lock. Only the attendant has a key, but somehow the damn thing locked. Probably when you slammed the door.”

  “I didn’t slam the door,” she said thoughtfully. “At least, I don’t think I did.”

  “Whatever,” he answered. “I have people looking into it. They’ll come up with the answer.”

  She remembered the other thing that was troubling her. “Why did it get so hot? The temperature just kept climbing….”

  “You set it pretty high,” he told her.

  “I set it?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he cautioned. “It’s all over now.”

  But she pressed on with the question. “How did I set it?”

  “There’s a control right outside the door. You probably pushed it up when you went in.”

  “Bill,” she started to argue. But then she stopped herself. She had no idea where the control was or what it looked like, so she was sure she had never touched it. That meant someone else had pushed it up to a very high setting. Carelessness, maybe. But that, coupled with a door that had somehow locked itself, was too much to believe. Like with the dance floor over the swimming pool, someone had caused this accident.

  She tried to stay awake after he left. This was the second attempt on her life in the past couple of weeks, and she didn’t feel safe even under the protection of the hospital staff. But the fatigue was overwhelming—probably something they were dripping into her arm to keep her relaxed. She felt herself falling asleep and didn’t have the strength to fight it.

  When she stirred again, a nurse was at her side, checking her monitors. The woman said something in French and smiled broadly. Apparently, she was delighted with the progress Ja
ne was making. This time she was able to fight through her drowsiness and keep herself awake. There were a thousand thoughts floating through her head, and somehow she had to link them together.

  There had been two attempts to kill her and a couple of accidents that had put her in jeopardy. Maybe they were intended as threats to scare her off, but any one of them might have been lethal. And there were several people who could have been involved in any of them.

  Now, in Paris, there was still another suspect. She had followed Selina Royce through the streets and into a bank lobby. Was it possible that Selina had recognized her from one of the stock photos in the newspapers? Her husband could have told her about his new wife and maybe even showed her a picture. He might have told her that their affair had to end. Would that be reason enough for his mistress to try to get rid of her?

  There was another good reason for suspecting Selina. Jane had been locked in the sauna at a women’s spa, which made it more likely that her attacker had been a woman. A man would have had a difficult time getting past the fashionable receptionist at the front desk. Certainly he would be noticed looking through the salon rooms or moving through the halls and locker rooms filled with undressed women. On the other hand, Selina could have walked right in, taken a locker for her clothes, and stepped out, wrapped in a towel. That would have given her complete freedom to roam the facility, find her victim, and see Jane when she stepped into the sauna.

  The nurse returned, pleasantly surprised to find Jane awake. She carried a vase of fresh flowers and brought them over for Jane’s inspection, talking happily in French and oohing and aahing over the flowers. She searched through the leaves, found a card, and handed it to her patient with a broad, knowing smile. They were from Bill, with a short note vowing his love. She watched as the woman set the flowers on the dresser, then listened politely to her exit line and remembered to say merci.

  Jane looked at the flowers, thought of her husband, and remembered the fact that had been haunting all her suspicions. William Andrews was the only one who had been present during all her accidents. He had been on the horse next to hers, in the apartment when she was struggling in the swimming pool, at the wedding when she was drugged, and at the helm when she was knocked overboard. Now he was with her in Paris, where she had nearly been steamed to death. So if all these instances of violence were connected, her husband was the most logical connection.

  It didn’t make sense, she had tried to convince herself. He had no need to marry her or any pressing reason to take her into his life. He could have sent her away at any time before the wedding and, even more awful to consider, could have turned away and left her in the ocean. But still, he knew that she was trying to learn the facts of his first wife’s death, a secret he was determined to keep. Her getting close to information that could ruin him would be motive enough to scare her off or, failing that, get rid of her.

  36

  Bill visited the hospital the next evening, explaining that he had been called away to England on business. “We were called before a Crown commission,” he said. “Strictly a formality, but a command performance. Some of these people think they’re descended from the Tudors, so I can’t very well send a branch manager.”

  “Have they figured out how the sauna happened to get locked?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said without any sign of disappointment. “But we’re still digging. The hotel has a detective on it, and I’ve hired one of my own. Even the police are investigating. We’ll find out, and then heaven help whoever turns out to be at fault.”

  Jane took a deep breath. “It shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Someone must know who had the key.”

  “The matron swears it never left her hands. And there’s nothing in her background to suggest that she could have been careless with it. She has no ties to anyone shady who might have borrowed it. The police are checking out everyone who works in the place and all the women who were there that day. Remarkably uneventful lives, particularly the customers.”

  “Is that it? Background checks?”

  He shrugged. “That’s the way the police work. The hotel, on the other hand, is investigating the lock. They brought in the manufacturer and they’ve taken it apart half a dozen times. It seems that no matter how hard they slam the door, they can’t get it to lock by itself.”

  “What about a duplicate key?”

  “There’s one kept in the attendant’s desk, but it’s still there.”

  “Couldn’t someone have taken it?”

  “Sure,” he admitted. “If they knew it was there. But then why would they have bothered to put it back? Most people don’t even notice that there’s a lock on the door, and the attendant admits that she very often doesn’t bother to lock it at night. So that keeps bringing us back to the lock itself and how it might have been set accidentally.”

  But he didn’t want her worrying. He would take care of the investigation. Her job was to get better so they could go back home. “Believe it or not, I’m even trying to clear a few days for us to get away together. Not right away, because when I get back I’ll have a lot of catching up to do. But in the next few months …”

  They speculated on where they might go. He thought in terms of another sailing vacation, maybe down in New Zealand, where it would soon be spring. He enthused over the long stretches of windswept ocean among the islands and helped her visualize the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef.

  Jane couldn’t tell him why she wasn’t excited by the prospect of lonely voyages over empty seas. It was ridiculous for many reasons, not the least being that he seemed so obviously in love with her. And yet he was the one person who had been around for all her “accidents.” Until there were some concrete explanations for pool motors that started themselves and dead-bolt locks that mysteriously closed, Jane would prefer places with lots of company.

  She asked about her recovery. Everyone seemed pleased, but since she couldn’t talk to anyone in English, she had no information on her prognosis. “You could go home tomorrow,” he said cheerfully. “They just want to watch you for another few days.”

  “Let’s go home tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t like being watched.” He argued a bit, but then agreed that he would take her home after one more day. He stayed late, kissing her lovingly before he left. Jane fell asleep as his footsteps were still echoing in the hall.

  When she stirred again, it was the middle of the night. The room was dark except for the streak of light from the open door and the green glow that came from the monitors over her head. There was a nurse in her room, a tall woman standing near the dresser, assembling some sort of medical equipment. Jane decided that she didn’t want to exchange pleasantries in a language she didn’t understand. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  She heard soft footsteps as the nurse moved around the room. Then she heard her door click shut. Jane opened her eyes, assuming that the nurse had left and closed the door behind her, but she was still there, now crossing the foot of the bed as she went to the window. When she tipped the blinds, the last bit of ambient light vanished from the room. Now, even with her eyes open, Jane could follow only the woman’s footsteps.

  She seemed to go back to the dresser and pause there. Jane heard a tinkle of glass that sounded like something being stirred. She raised her head from the pillow. “What now?” she asked.

  The soft voice responded in French, but with just a few words instead of the usual happy banter. Then, in English, the nurse said, “It’s just your medication.”

  She speaks English, Jane thought. They finally found one I can understand. She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “You’re new!”

  “No, just back from my holiday.”

  “Great! Will you be staying here from now on?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the voice from the darkness. She was directly at the foot of the bed, and Jane could now make out her silhouette in the glow of the monitors. She saw something glisten in the nurse’s hand.

&nb
sp; “What’s that for?” she asked. As the nurse stepped closer, she could see a hypodermic needle.

  “An anticoagulant. To stop blood clots.”

  The monitors illuminated the woman’s chest. Jane saw the lapels of a jacket and the flash of jewelry around her neck. “I haven’t been getting any shots. Are you sure this is for me?”

  The nurse took Jane’s hand and lifted her arm. Jane noticed the long, painted fingernails. She looked up as half the woman’s face came into the green glow. There was a flash of recognition. She knew this woman. She had seen her before, not here in the hospital but somewhere else. Then she caught a glimpse of the needle, aimed at her bare shoulder.

  The woman in the bank, she remembered. Jane couldn’t see her eyes, but mentally she could fill in the dark sunglasses that had masked the top of the woman’s face and the scarf that hid her hair. Selina! Selina Royce!

  37

  She jerked away just as the needle pricked her skin, and with her free hand, she slapped at the woman’s arms. The needle came free, spraying a quick jet of colorless liquid. She pulled back her arm and rolled away, but the woman’s hand clutched her shoulder. As Jane rolled back, she let her fist fly. She felt the stick of the hypodermic just as her punch found the side of the woman’s head. Her attacker fell back into the darkness, leaving the needle dangling from the flesh of Jane’s shoulder. She pulled it free and hurled into the darkness. Then she screamed with all her energy.

  She heard the woman stumbling in the darkness. Her door suddenly opened, letting in light from the hall. The woman’s figure blocked the door and turned into the corridor. Jane saw a flash of her profile and got a glimpse of the figure she had followed along the street only a couple of days ago. She swung her legs out to pursue her but was tethered by the wires connected to the monitors. She screamed again as she hunted for the call button to the nurse’s station. When she pressed a button, the television set on the far wall came to life.