Hired: GP and Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal (11 page)

‘It all seems to be fine,’ she said reassuringly, putting the instrument down. ‘But please do make an appointment to see an optician pretty soon. Don’t think that somehow you’re “giving in” by having glasses. To be honest, on the basis of reading that chart, you shouldn’t drive without them.’

Janet looked with slight embarrassment at Terry. ‘Oh dear—how very remiss of me…I should have realised that—both my parents had very poor sight.’ Then with a burst of candour she said, ‘The thing is, Doctor, Cyril is a great one for his health and the more he goes on about what he might have wrong with him, the more I seem to want to prove that I’m in the peak of condition!’

Terry laughed. ‘And I’m sure you are! You’re very slim—no weight worries. I’ll take your BP now, but I bet it’s normal.’

‘I promise to make an eye appointment. I have put things like that off because this is our busiest time of year at the hotel, of course, but I realise how important it is to have my eyes checked,’ said Janet when Terry had finished.

She picked up her handbag and got up from the chair. ‘One thing, though, Doctor. Please don’t say anything to Cyril—he’ll only say he told me so and never let me forget it! I shall pretend I’m going to the optician off my own bat!’

‘Whatever goes on between us is strictly confidential,’ assured Terry. ‘But please come to see us if you don’t feel well, even if you do feel you’ve got to prove something to your husband!’

So that was that, thought Terry wryly as the woman went out. In fact, it was a very good thing that Cyril had persuaded his wife to come in for a check-up before she had a major accident—there were definitely times when it paid to be fussy!

It was a busy morning and Terry made one or two house calls during her lunch-hour before dashing back to a mother and baby clinic at two o’clock. By three-thirty she was back in her room, stretching her stiff back and yawning as Bunty came in with a pile of papers in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.

‘Here’s the blood tests,’ she said cheerily. ‘And lots of mail to keep you occupied. And a cup of tea to wake you up—I saw that yawn!’

Terry laughed. ‘I could just flake out now,’ she admitted. ‘That tea’s really welcome. I’ll make a start on the paperwork now.’

Then Terry’s intercom buzzed and Bunty put the papers down on the desk and went out.

‘When you’re free, can I have a word?’ asked Atholl.

‘Yes. I’m just going to get to grips with some paperwork.’

She looked up as Atholl came into the room, a familiar rush of desire and happiness mingling when she saw him. He stood for a second looking at her from the doorway, dark hair standing up in little peaks over his forehead, his blue eyes smiling at her. Then he strode over to her, looking down with a tender smile.

‘Was last night wonderful or what, sweetheart?’

Then, before she could answer, he held her face in his hands and kissed her full and passionately on her lips.

‘For God’s sake, Atholl—we’re at work!’ she protested, half laughing and putting her hands on his shoulders to push him away.

‘I know,’ he said imperturbably. ‘So what? Just a friendly greeting! You left pretty promptly this morning. I thought you might have been tired and had a lie-in after last night…’ He looked mischievously into her eyes.

‘I certainly had a good night’s sleep,’ she said rather primly.

‘I wonder why that should be?’ he teased.

And Terry smiled up at him radiantly. ‘It was wonderful Atholl, but we must cool it in the office.’

‘I’m just being friendly,’ he murmured, pulling her up from her chair, and kissing her neck and cleavage with soft butterfly kisses that sent little electric shocks of pleasure through her body. And, of course, her good resolutions were forgotten, and she responded ardently, allowing him to tease her lips open, arching her body against his, feeling his hands caressing her curves, until she knew that unless he stopped fairly soon she might throw caution to the winds and allow him to make love to her on the floor of her surgery! He drew away with a chuckle and held her at arm’s length for a second, his eyes dancing with amusement.

‘I’d love to finish this off properly, my sweet, but perhaps, as you said, this room isn’t quite the right place during surgery hours…’

Terry laughed. ‘Saved by the bell! I had visions of Isobel coming in and finding us—and I don’t think she’s too keen on you having female followers!’

Atholl grinned. ‘She regards me as a surrogate son and after my experience with Zara she’s like a Rottweiler where my welfare is concerned! However, back to work, I’m afraid. We’ve got a potential worry at the Caledonian Hotel.’

Terry frowned. ‘Isn’t that the place that belongs to the Rathbones? Janet was my first patient this morning.’

‘Poor woman—she’ll be very worried at the moment. They had a small wedding party there at lunchtime and one or two of the guests collapsed shortly after eating the lunch.’

‘Oh, no! Food poisoning, I suppose?’

‘It’s all rather mysterious—not the usual symptoms, from what I can gather. The victims have been taken to hospital but the public health people will be some time getting across from the mainland, so I’m afraid it’s up to you and I to go and take samples of everything in the kitchen to get them analysed as quickly as possible. I’ve telephoned through to say that the kitchen must be sealed off until we get there.’

Terry grabbed her medical bag, and put the e-mails and post to one side of the computer—she would look at them later.

‘What are the symptoms?’ asked Terry as they drove over to the hotel.

‘Pretty grim—numbness, a weak pulse, thirst, and two of the victims have had convulsions and paralysis of the limbs,’ said Atholl. ‘The last thing a place like Scuola needed with the start of the vital tourist season is an outbreak of illness in a hotel—the sooner we can trace its cause, the better.’

The Caledonian Hotel looked out over the Scuola Sound and had pretty gardens surrounding it. As they drove up, Terry could see a young couple playing tennis on a court at the side of the hotel and at the front was a beautifully mown lawn with croquet hoops on it. Everything looked immaculate and cared for.

‘It’s very popular with holidaymakers and the locals,’ explained Atholl as they got out of the car. ‘Whatever one can say about Cyril as a patient, he and Janet work like the devil—it must be quite stressful. They have an excellent chef and the food’s terrific. I just hope to goodness they haven’t got salmonella or the like on their hands—it could ruin their reputation.’

Janet met them at the door, her face showing the strain of the past few hours. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ she said. ‘I’m so worried, we seem to have an outbreak of some kind on our hands. I can’t believe it’s food poisoning—we’re absolutely meticulous about everything that’s produced here.’

Atholl patted her shoulder kindly. ‘I know how careful you are, Janet. Try not to worry. We’ll go straight to the kitchen and start taking samples straight away—it could be something that’s been brought in from outside. Nobody’s disturbed anything, have they?’

Janet trotted along beside them, her words tumbling over each other. ‘It was awful. They simply started shaking and collapsed about half an hour after eating. At first we thought one of them was having a heart attack as he suffers from angina, but it was soon obvious that it was affecting quite a few of them. Oh, what can it be?’

‘What had they been eating?’ asked Terry.

Janet looked a little tearful. ‘The wedding party had roast beef, and Cyril and I had a roast beef sandwich for an early lunch—but we haven’t been affected.’

‘We’ll get the samples for analysis now, and then go over to the lab at the hospital to get them done as soon as possible and look at the victims while we’re there.’

It took a good hour to go through everything in the kitchen, collect all the samples and then rush them to the hospital laboratory.

‘We’ll try and get them done today,’ said the technician. ‘Everyone’s going to work flat out.’

‘Then let’s sit down and make a definitive list of absolutely everything these people ate this lunchtime—to the smallest thing,’ suggested Atholl, pulling a pen from his pocket. ‘One good thing—no one seems in immediate danger although it would be very helpful if we knew the cause.’

It seemed to be a fairly random attack—a husband would be affected, but not the wife, a parent, but not a child. They interviewed everyone they were able to at the hospital, and Terry observed in a puzzled way when they were back in the hotel office with the Rathbones, ‘Everyone seems to have had the same—roast beef.’ She looked at the list they’d made, tracing the ticks against each name. ‘There’s only one thing I can see that differs from one group to the other, and that’s the fact that some had the horseradish sauce and others didn’t.’

Atholl stared at her for a moment, then said slowly, ‘You know, you may be on to something there. It’s a long shot, but at the back of my mind a bell’s ringing. I think it’s time we interviewed the chef!’

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Terry curiously.

‘I can’t be sure—it seems almost too far fetched, but I have come across it once before,’ replied Atholl cryptically, striding through to the kitchens with Terry and the Rathbones behind him.

Bernie, the chef, was defensive when questioned. ‘Everything I serve is home prepared—the meats from local suppliers, the vegetables are from the kitchen garden—’

‘Ah, yes, the vegetables,’ interrupted Atholl. ‘Where do you get your horseradish sauce from?’

‘As I told you,’ said Bernie proudly, ‘it’s all home made. The horseradish grows in the garden.’

‘Then let’s go into the kitchen garden and see the exact spot you got the roots from,’ said Atholl. He paused and asked Cyril and Janet, ‘Tell me, when you had your roast beef sandwiches, did you have horseradish sauce with them?’

Cyril and Janet Rathbone looked at each other in puzzlement. ‘No, we don’t like spicy hot stuff,’ said Cyril. ‘Don’t tell me it’s something to do with that?’

Atholl didn’t reply but went with Bernie into the walled garden where the vegetables were grown. At the far end there had been some excavation work to demolish a shed and the ground was fairly churned up.

‘Show me the roots you used,’ said Atholl.

Bernie bent down and pulled up the familiar horseradish roots from the disturbed soil and handed them to Atholl, who scratched their surface and sniffed them, then smiled rather grimly.

‘I think we’ve found the culprit,’ he said looking up at them. ‘These tubers look like horseradish roots but, in fact, I’d bet my life they’re aconite or monksbane, which is highly toxic. It’s very easy to confuse the two roots, especially when the earth is churned about and the familiar leaves have been trampled on.’

There were quick indrawn breaths of amazement from the others.

‘What made you think of it?’ asked Terry.

‘When I was working in A and E we had a similar case. It’s a few years back now, but when I heard that word “horseradish” it brought it back to me. A farmer’s wife supplemented her income by making sauces and chutneys and had made the same mistake.’

‘Oh, my God!’ said Bernie in a broken voice. He turned ashen and sat down suddenly on a bench. ‘I’d no idea…I…I can’t believe I nearly killed all those people…’

‘It wasn’t you who picked the roots,’ cut in Janet suddenly. ‘It was me. I just handed them to you.’ She turned to Terry, her face a white mask of horror. ‘Perhaps it was because of my bad vision. I didn’t notice the difference in the leaves…’

Atholl shook his head. ‘As you saw, the ground had been so churned up, there were no leaves, and the tubers of both plants are very similar.’

The Rathbones and Bernie looked completely shocked. Terry said briskly, ‘Look, no one’s in danger. I’ve just rung A and E and I think we can breathe a sigh of relief. If it’s confirmed that Atholl’s right, they’ll know what they’re dealing with. I imagine that people only had a tiny bit of the sauce because it would have tasted rather peculiar.’

‘I…I’d no idea that we had monksbane,’ said Janet miserably. ‘I hope it won’t ruin our reputation…we’ve worked so hard to get this place on its feet. I couldn’t bear it if the whole thing went down again.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Atholl gently. ‘It’s a harsh lesson but now you know all in the garden isn’t necessarily roses, I’m sure you’ll never make that mistake again. Look,’ he added cheerfully, ‘I’m not in the least worried—in fact, I’d like to book Dr Younger and I in for a meal tomorrow night!’

Janet looked at him in grateful surprise. ‘Of course—and it’ll be on the house!’

Atholl shook his head firmly. ‘Oh, no, we’ll pay our way. What do you say, Terry?’

‘Sounds a great idea to me.’ Terry grinned. ‘And I can’t wait to taste your roast beef!’

The next day Terry came into the surgery early to deal with the paperwork she’d been unable to look at the day before because of the incident at the Caledonian Hotel. There was a message from Atholl to say that the laboratory had confirmed that aconite had been found in the horseradish sauce sample and that the patients were all doing well—and that he was looking forward to their dinner together that evening!

Terry sat down in front of the usual pile of circulars from drug companies, medical magazines and letters that came in on a daily basis, sorting them out with a light heart. She mused rather distractedly on what she would wear that evening. Her wardrobe was decidedly meagre, and she decided to nip out during the lunch-hour on the off chance that the small dress shop in Scuola had anything remotely glamorous she could buy.

One of the letters was a private one, with a handwritten envelope. Odd, that—she never received personal mail nowadays. After all, no one knew where she lived, except her father’s solicitor, and that would surely be typewritten.

She turned the envelope over in her hand. There was just the barest address there. ‘Dr T. Younger, GP on Scuola.’ There was something familiar about the handwriting.

Curiously she slit open the envelope and pulled out a note together with a newspaper clipping—it was the article and photograph about her and Atholl rescuing the baby from the quayside the first day she’d arrived in Scuola. It had obviously been taken up by a national newspaper.