When the consul came to see me, and the pleasant young men from the embassy, we were unable to make out what had happened. Had he stepped too far out? Climbed up on the roof for a better view? Had the concierge mistaken his condition and had he lost his balance? Jumped? Or had he been pushed—in the fashion of political assassins who pursue their foes into other nations so as to conceal their bloody reach?
We can never know.
The embassy and the consulate thought he was murdered.
And when I told Tom, my friend and doctor, the step-by-step progress of the first phase of my sudden sickness—when I remembered the thirst and the miraculous appearance of a carafe of water—Tom said, "I think you had cholera. It could have been in the water. Some people are immune to it. Maybe Ted was."
Maybe.
He was not immune to a five-story fall onto a cement sidewalk.
What matter?
Ted was dead.
I sent the cables.