Prescription—One Husband

by Marion Lennox

  ‘L-lunch, I guess…’ Fern frowned, deep in thought. She and Quinn Gallagher were standing on the top church step, and they were alone. The photographer employed to take pictures of the newly married Fern and Sam was wandering from one group of distressed people to another. The photographer had the look of a man who’d been slapped over the head with a wet fish. He looked how Fern felt.

  Uncle Al was hovering anxiously over Aunt Maud by the car. Maudie was bent double.

  ‘Lunch,’ Quinn Gallagher repeated slowly. ‘You’ll have to be more specific than that.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s five o’clock now. Did you have lunch at one?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Then that’s four hours ago. The right amount of time for-the standard reaction to dubious food. Did people eat lunch together?’

  Fern made her bewildered mind concentrate. ‘I…Yes. Aunt Maudie put on lunch. It was supposed to be for a few relatives from the mainland but it turned out huge. Most of the island was there.’

  ‘And what did you have?’

  ‘I…’ Fern shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. For heaven’s sake, I was so darned nervous I couldn’t eat a thing.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Quinn said drily. ‘That’s why you’re not getting rid of it like your Sam. But I’m not asking what you had for lunch, Dr Rycroft. I’m asking what these people had. Let’s stop playing the nervous bride for a moment, shall we, and start acting like the doctor you’re supposed to be.’

  The voice was suddenly hard and businesslike—all trace of laughter gone. It was like a douche of cold water and it had its effect.

  Fern’s mind stopped turning in meaningless circles and concentrated. Absently she pulled the net veil from her head and ran her hand through her close-cropped curls as she thought.

  Medicine first. Her training slid back into its rightful niche and took over.

  ‘Sandwiches,’ she said firmly. ‘My aunt and I and a couple of neighbours made them this morning. And a huge vat of vegetable soup.’

  ‘What was in the sandwiches?’

  It was a crazy conversation. To be standing on the step of the church, still dressed in bridal white, with the wrong man standing by her side demanding to know what was in sandwiches! Fern blinked.

  ‘Ordinary. Ham, egg, salad, Vegemite…Different fillings.’

  ‘Sounds like gastronomic heaven,’ Quinn said drily, the smile lurking once again. ‘But hardly dangerous. And the vegetable soup?’

  ‘Aunt and I made it last night. Everything was fresh. It can’t have made people ill.’

  ‘Well, something did.’ The smile faded and Quinn’s eyes snapped into demanding professionalism. ‘Come on, lady. You were there and I wasn’t. If this isn’t food poisoning then we have something potentially more serious on our hands and we may need reinforcements. Can you assure me that was all that was eaten?’

  ‘Yes!’ Fern’s voice was practically a wail. ‘There was nothing…’

  And then she stopped dead.

  Lizzy…

  Lizzy Hurst arriving just as the soup was being served. Apologising for being late. Kissing Sam’s crimson cheek and wishing him all the best. Saying that she hadn’t been able to afford a gift but she’d made something special for lunch—just to help in her small way to make Sam’s wedding day truly memorable. And carrying in her arms loaded trays of hors d’oeuvres.

  Oysters, gathered fresh that morning, Lizzy had said, but to make them special she’d topped them with grilled, melted cheese and slivers of bacon. Hot from Lizzy’s oven. They’d been eaten in a flash and Lizzy had smiled sweetly and said, ‘See you in church.’

  And Lizzy’s triumphant smile as she’d slipped out of the church.

  ‘It’ll be the oysters,’ Fern whispered. ‘I’ll bet…’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Fern took a deep breath. She found that she was trembling. Poor Sam. He hadn’t wanted to come home for fear of Lizzy’s reaction and he’d been almost pathetically grateful when she’d seemed gracious. And now…

  She glanced over at Sam’s still-heaving shoulders. Their wedding was in ruins. Because of one malicious stunt.

  ‘We had oysters as hors d’oeuvres,’ Fern said unsteadily. ‘I think…I guess they’ll have been made with oysters that were off. They had garlic and herbs and bacon and cheese grilled on top. That would have disguised the fact that they were bad. A lot of people were commenting that there was so much stuff on them that you could hardly taste the oysters.’

  Quinn’s brows snapped together. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘From Lizzy Hurst,’ Fern whispered miserably. ‘She’s…she’s a local fisherman.’

  ‘But if she’s a fisherman she’ll know not to serve bad oysters. She’ll have known…’

  ‘Yes.’

  Quinn’s face grew more and more incredulous. ‘Are you saying this could be deliberate?’

  Fern nodded. She felt like weeping. ‘I’m almost sure it is.’

  ‘But…’ Quinn’s mind was racing and it showed. ‘If it’s deliberate…If you believe that’s possible then how do you know she didn’t just add poison? Dr Rycroft, we could have a major emergency here…’

  ‘Lizzy’s not that stupid—or that bad.’ Fern put her hand to her cheeks in a gesture of distress. ‘Look, I know this sounds dreadful and I probably can’t prove a thing. But Sam—my fiané—lived next door to Lizzy Hurst all the time he and Lizzy were kids. Lizzy adored him. She always assumed they’d marry.

  ‘Well, at seventeen, Sam decided he wanted to leave the island and be a lawyer. He didn’t want Lizzy. Lizzy hit the roof. She did all sorts of crazy things. Every time he’s come back she’s made his visits miserable—even though he’s been gone now for over ten years.’

  ‘So you believe…’ Quinn Gallagher let out his breath on a long, slow whistle. ‘You believe this is a deliberate attempt at sabotage?’

  ‘Lizzy has an oyster lease south of the island. She knows everything there is to know about oysters. She’ll know just when they start to turn—and she’ll know we won’t be able to prove a thing.’

  Quinn gazed round.

  ‘The photographer’s not ill,’ he said. ‘Was he…?’

  ‘He wasn’t at lunch.’

  ‘Your uncle?’

  ‘He hates oysters.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I was too nervous to eat anything.’

  ‘OK, it fits,’ Quinn said decisively, and Fern had a sudden image of him in Casualty Department, complete with white coat and stethoscope. She found the image strong, competent and strangely comforting. ‘But we need to find Lizzy and confirm it.’

  ‘I guess…’ Fern looked doubtfully over the scattering groups of guests. They were nearly all gone now—taken to their cars and bolting like rabbits to the privacy of their own homes.

  ‘You know where she lives?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we phone her?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a phone.’ Fern grimaced. ‘And if I know Lizzy, she’ll be hard to find. But I agree; she has to be found and I guess I know the places to look. OK, I’ll go.’ She looked ruefully down at her bridal splendour. ‘But I’ll stop on the way and get something more suitable to wear.’

  ‘What you’re wearing is hardly clinical.’ The smile surfaced again. ‘Though it’s white enough.’

  ‘There’s no need to laugh.’ Fern drew herself up to her full five feet three inches and glared. ‘It’s not your wedding that’s been totally ruined.’

  ‘No.’ He smiled down at her, his lips curved in what almost seemed a trace of self-mockery. ‘A pity…’

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ Fern snapped. ‘Are you coming with me to find Lizzy?’

  ‘No.’ Quinn shrugged expressive shoulders. ‘There’s work that might need doing here.’ He looked across to where Sam was still in deep distress, his lean and harshly contoured face growing grim.

  ‘I’ll check Sam before I go,’ Fern told him. ‘I’ll take him hom
e to his parents.’ She stared around helplessly. ‘They seem to have gone already.’

  ‘I’ll check Sam,’ Quinn said brusquely. ‘He’s the least of our troubles. It’s not the fit young men I’m worried about.’ The laughter had completely faded from Quinn Gallagher’s voice.

  ‘There are others we need to be worried about. Lizzy Hurst might have thought she was doing nothing but playing a sadistic joke, but there are a couple of your wedding guests whom this could really hurt. Frank Reid’s elderly and diabetic. As far as I can see he’s gone home alone—and gone in a hurry. I’ll go there now.’

  Fern drew in her breath. She had forgotten Frank.

  Who else? She forced her mind to run through the list of guests. ‘There’s Pete Harny,’ she said finally. ‘You’ve been here for six months, haven’t you, so I guess you know he’s haemophiliac. He was there at lunchtime and I think he ate the oysters—but his parents will phone if he starts haemorrhaging.’

  ‘His parents will phone if they’re capable—if they’re not in too much trouble themselves—and I’d rather treat him before he starts haemorrhaging.’ Quinn’s eyes were suddenly cold as consequences started flooding through both their minds. ‘What a foolish girl! What a stupid, stupid thing to do.’

  ‘She’s in love,’ Fern said bleakly. ‘Anything’s supposed to be excused if you’re in love.’

  ‘Well, you’re a bride and I can’t see you poisoning people,’ Quinn retorted.

  ‘But I’m not in love!’

  The words were said before Fern had time to stop them. They hung in the warm evening air, as incongruous as everything else that had happened this day. As incongruous as the white satin…

  Quinn Gallagher stared down at her for a very long moment. Fern stared straight back, her huge eyes defiant. They looked a picture, the two of them; the bride in a floating vision of white satin and the muscular man by her side, virile, capable and commanding in the deep black of his tailored dinner suit.

  Bride and groom—from a mockery of a wedding!

  ‘Then, would you mind telling me what we’re doing here?’ Quinn demanded finally. ‘If you’re not in love what in heaven’s name are you doing playing brides and making island girls so jealous they commit criminal injury?’

  ‘I mean…I mean I’m not in love like Lizzy,’ Fern stammered. ‘I…Sam and I are getting married for sensible reasons—not for stupid, romantic love.’

  Silence.

  This was crazy.

  She was going mad. She’d have to get out of here.

  Fern lifted the folds of her white skirts from the ground and cast a doubtful look across at Sam. Sam would just have to cope with Quinn Gallagher’s ministrations. She had to find Lizzy.

  She had to get away from Quinn Gallagher. He was unsettling her more than anything else was.

  ‘Look, I have to go,’ she stammered. Quinn Gallagher was watching her as a bemused hawk would have watched a tiny chicken’s futile attempts at escape. ‘The sooner I find Lizzy the better.’ Fern took two hasty steps down from the church door. ‘I’ll telephone if I find out anything,’ she called as she backed away. ‘Where…where can I reach you?’

  ‘Mobile phone.’ The hawk, it seemed, was releasing his prey. Quinn lifted the machine from the belt under his jacket and held it up. ‘The island telephonist has the number.’

  ‘Can you…? You will check Sam before you go? Please…?’

  ‘I’ll check your beloved,’ Quinn said grimly. ‘Just make it worth my while by finding Lizzy fast.’

  Fern nodded, lifting her skirts high and breaking into a run.

  Bridal chicken in full flight…

  She needed a car.

  There was only one car available in front of the church—the big white limousine in which her uncle had been planning to drive the newly married pair to the reception. It stood deserted, beribboned in white satin, white net over the back seat and a set of bride and groom dolls smiling at the world from the back shelf.

  The dolls must be the only happy couple on the island!

  The keys were in the ignition.

  It was all Fern needed.

  Ignoring the impulse to pick up the dolls and throw them as far as she could, Fern wedged herself into the driver’s seat. The hoops of her bridal gown welled up around the steering column.

  Good grief…

  Get on with it, Fern…

  She started the car and put her satined foot on the accelerator, all the while crazily aware of the dark figure on the church steps, watching…

  She could feel Quinn Gallagher’s eyes still on her until she rounded the bend and was out of sight of the church.

  It was all she could do not to glance back.

  It was the end of her wedding.

  For good?

  That was a crazy notion. They could try again tomorrow, Fern thought, and closed her eyes at the idea of the reorganisation her aunt would insist on.

  Aunt Maud wouldn’t be well enough tomorrow. Or the next day either, Fern thought savagely. Fern’s aunt had seemed weak and out of sorts since Fern had arrived home on the island and Fern had fretted that Maud seemed to be ageing early. Lizzy Hurst should have calculated the effects her horrid oysters would have on people like Aunt Maud.

  Quinn would be learning the effects of the poison on the island’s invalids right now, Fern thought bleakly, and for a wild moment she wished that she was driving beside him to check on the two islanders they were concerned about.

  ‘I should be wishing I was staying with Sam,’ she corrected herself, and knew that she didn’t wish it in the least. Sam would be devastated.

  She swore at the road in front and shoved her foot harder on the accelerator. The bridal car sped forward with undignified haste.

  What a mess.

  How could things possibly get any worse than this?

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE shouldn’t have asked that question.

  Three minutes later Fern pulled up outside the home of her aunt and uncle and raced inside. She had two minutes to climb into some jeans, she told herself, but she got no further than the front door before she knew that the worst was here with a vengeance.

  ‘Fern…’

  It was her uncle’s voice, hoarse with fear, and he was yelling from the upstairs bedroom.

  Fern heard the fear.

  Uncle Al wasn’t a man to express fear lightly.

  Fern took the stairs three at a time, her bridal gown hoisted almost to her waist.

  Dear God…No!

  This wasn’t food poisoning. Fern’s medical training snapped into place as she stared down in horror at her aunt.

  Fern’s aunt had collapsed. Maudie Rycroft was a limp, prostrate form huddled against the wall of the bedroom, her wonderful, flowery wedding hat tipped crazily down over her face. She wasn’t moving.

  Fern sank to her knees, satin wedding gown flowing out around her, and searched frantically for a pulse.

  Nothing. There was no pulse in Maud’s wrist. None in the carotid artery.

  ‘What happened?’ Fern was already clearing the airway, sliding her aunt down to lay her flat on the floor and give herself room to work. Maud’s crazy hat was tossed aside, unnoticed.

  ‘She was ill,’ Fern’s uncle stammered. ‘Like everyone else, she was sick as a dog. Maud was sick once outside the church and again just now.’

  The elderly farmer was literally wringing his hands. He stared down at his wife and his face was as bloodless as Maud’s. ‘And she was so upset, Fern,’ he whispered. ‘Your aunt was sobbing and sobbing, thinking all her plans for a lovely wedding were ruined. And then she came out of the bathroom and said her chest felt tight and there was pain going down her arm and she just…she just fell over…I couldn’t even catch her before she fell…’

  It had to be a heart attack. Nothing else would fit.

  Unless the oysters Lizzy had given them were so poisonous that they had affected the heart. There were poisons that caused paralysis…

&n
bsp; Surely not, Fern thought frantically, the nightmare image of the whole island collapsing with heart pain flitting through her head and being thrust away as unthinkable.

  ‘Phone Dr Gallagher,’ she snapped back to her uncle. ‘Tell him Maud’s had a cardiac arrest and I need him here now. Go!’

  This was a dreadful way to treat the uncle she loved—to treat any frightened relative for that matter—but there was no time now for reassurance or niceties. Fern’s medical equipment was all still in Sydney. She needed Quinn’s doctor’s bag and she needed it now!

  There were some things she could do without equipment. She had to get oxygen to Maud’s brain. Fern took her aunt’s face between her hands and blew in her first breath.

  Then she let Maud’s face go, dropped her hands onto her aunt’s chest and linked them.

  And shoved down hard.

  One, two, three…

  Cardio-pulmonary massage was almost instinctive in Fern by now. She could do it in her sleep. How many times had she done this in an emergency situation?

  But how many times had it worked? What were the statistics? Something horrible…Less than twenty-five per cent of those…

  Don’t think of that. Don’t. It had to work now. It must…

  Please, please, please…

  This was her beloved Aunt Maud. Maud was only in her sixties. It wasn’t her time to die…

  Fern shoved down hard, again and again, pausing only to fill her aunt’s lungs with air before beginning the relentless rhythm again. In the hall below she could hear her uncle shouting desperately into the phone and then she heard his feet pounding upstairs again.

  ‘He’s on his way,’ the farmer gasped. Fern didn’t stop her rhythm for a moment. Al stared down at his wife and seemed almost to shrink against the wall. ‘Oh, God, Fern, is she…?’

  Fern didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Breathe, push…Push…Push…

  Come on, Maudie…

  They’d done so much for her, Albert and Maudie. What was the use of Fern’s medicine if she couldn’t save her aunt now?