Chapter Sixteen.
In the City.
Through several days I remained in bed, my limbs rigid, my senses bewildered.
Although we said nothing to Tweedie, Cleugh entirely shared my suspicion that if an attempt had actually been made upon my life it had been made at Riverdene. The doctor ran in several times each day, and Dick, assisted by old Mrs Joad, was as attentive to my wants as any trained nurse, snatching all the time he could spare from his duties to sit by me and gossip of men and things in Fleet Street, and the latest “scoop” of the Comet.
Tweedie was puzzled. Each time he saw me he remarked upon my curious symptoms, carefully noting them and expressing wonder as to the exact nature of the deleterious substance. He pronounced the opinion that it was some alkaloid, for such it was shown by the reagents he had used in his analysis, but of what nature he was utterly at a loss to determine. Many were the questions he put to me as to what I had eaten on that day, and I explained how I had lunched at one of the restaurants in Fleet Street, and afterwards dined with friends at Laleham.
“You ate no sandwiches, or anything of that kind at station refreshment bars?” he asked, when he visited me one morning, in the vague idea, I suppose, that the poison might, after all, be a ptomaine.
“None,” I answered. “With the exception of what I told you, I had a glass of wine at the house of a friend at Hampton before rowing up to Laleham.”
“A glass of wine,” he repeated slowly, as if reflecting. “You noticed no peculiar taste in it? What was it—port?”
“Yes,” I replied. “An excellent wine it was, without any taste unusual.”
For the first time the recollection of that glass of wine given me by Eva at The Hollies came back to me. Surely she could not have deliberately given me a fatal draught?