Allan Folsom - The Machiavelli Covenant

• 8:20 P.M.

It was still overcast and drizzling.

Nicholas Marten sat behind the wheel of the rental car parked just down and across the street from Dr. Lorraine Stephenson's Georgetown residence. The three-story house, in this leafy, upscale neighborhood, was dark. If anyone was home they were either already asleep or in a room to the rear. Marten chose to assume neither. He had been there for more than two hours. Someone asleep would have had to have gone to bed about 6:30. Possible, of course, but unlikely. Alternatively, over that same two hours, someone in a room to the rear would most likely have left it for one reason or another: to go to the toilet, another room, the kitchen, something; and because of the time of day and the dreariness of the weather that person in all probability would have turned on a light to illuminate their way. So common sense told him Dr. Stephenson had not yet come home. Which was why he was waiting. And would continue to do so until she did.

How many times that day had he taken the note from his jacket pocket and read it? At this point he could quote it from memory.

I, Caroline Parsons, give Nicholas Marten of Manchester, England, full access to all of my personal papers, including my medical records, and to the personal papers of my late husband, United States Congressman Michael Parsons of California .

The note-typed, signed in a shaky scrawl by Caroline, then dated, witnessed, and stamped and signed by notary public-had been delivered to Marten that morning at his hotel. The day and date of its writing and the timing of its delivery were telling. This was Monday, April 3. Caroline had called him in Manchester late in the day on Thursday, March 30, asking him to come, and he'd left for Washington the following morning. Her letter had been written and notarized that same day, Friday, March 31, but he had known nothing about it until this morning. On Friday she had still been lucid, and knowing her time was short and unsure that he would get there before she died, had called for a notary and had the piece done. Yet he had known nothing of its existence and it had not been delivered until after her death.

"That was as she wished, as I wrote you, Mr. Marten," Caroline's attorney, Richard Tyler, told him over the phone when he called to inquire about it. Tyler's cover letter had informed him that Caroline's letter was indeed valid. Just how far the authority she had given him might go if challenged in a court of law was difficult to say. Nonetheless it remained a legal document and Marten could use it as he chose. "Only you would know her intentions for writing it, Mr. Marten, but I take it that you were a very close and dear friend and she trusted you implicitly."

"Yes," Marten had said, thanking Tyler for his help and asking if he could call on him later if legal questions arose, before hanging up. Clearly Caroline had not discussed her suspicions or fears with her attorney, which probably meant she had shared them with no one but him. That the delivery of the letter had been delayed until after her death would have given Marten an opportunity to reflect and to see how very serious she had been about her allegations that she and her husband and her son had been murdered. The letter and the timing were everything, designed with the sense that Marten might not fully believe her allegations because of her physical and mental state, but knowing too that if he did, he would do everything he could to find out about them.

He would do it because of what they'd meant to each other for so many years, regardless of the divergent roads their lives had taken. He would do it too because of who he was and what he was made of. The letter would help convince him she'd been right. It would also help open some doors that might otherwise have remained shut.

• 8:25 P.M.

Headlights suddenly reflected in Marten's rearview mirror and he watched a car come down the street behind him. As it drew nearer he could see that it was a dark late-model Ford. The car slowed as it approached Stephenson's home then moved on past, turning at the end of the block. For a moment he thought it might have been the doctor herself, but if it had been she'd changed her mind and kept on going. It made him wonder if maybe she wanted to return to her house but was afraid to. If so, it underscored the reason he was there and went hand in hand with what had happened earlier when he'd tried to get in touch with her.

He'd phoned her office twice that morning. Both times he'd explained to the receptionist that he'd been a close friend of Caroline Parsons and that he wanted to discuss Caroline's illness with Dr. Stephenson. Each time he'd been told the doctor was with patients and would return his call later. By noon there had been no response.

After the lunch hour he'd called again. Still the doctor was not available. This time he asked that Stephenson be told that if she was reluctant to discuss Mrs. Parsons's situation she need not worry because he had the lawful authority to access her medical records. His tone had been wholly businesslike and was meant to ease any professional concerns Stephenson might have had. In truth, despite Caroline's letter and what she had told him, he had no tangible reason to believe there had been foul play. Caroline had been terminally ill and under enormous stress and life would have seemed desperately hopeless and cruel any way she looked at it. Nonetheless, the letter existed and the questions lingered, and so until he was wholly convinced Caroline had been wrong, he would continue to pursue it.

What surprised him, what turned him and made him sit waiting in the dark outside Stephenson's home, had come at ten minutes to four in the afternoon, when the phone rang in his hotel room.

"This is Dr. Stephenson," she'd said, her voice flat and without emotion.

"Thanks for calling back," Marten had said evenly. "I was a close friend of Caroline Parsons. You and I met briefly in her hospital room."

"What can I do for you?" she pressed; this time her voice had an impatient edge.

"I would like to talk to you about the circumstances surrounding Caroline's illness and the cause of her death."

"I'm sorry, there are privacy issues. It is not something I can discuss."

"I understand, doctor, but I have been given legal access to all of her papers, her medical records included."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Marten," she said sharply, "there is nothing I can do to help you. Please don't call again." Abruptly she hung up.

Marten remembered standing there, the receiver still in his hand. Like that, he'd been shut down and shut off. What it meant was that if he wanted to see Caroline's medical records he would have to go through an entire legal process and then months and perhaps thousands of dollars in legal fees later, he might or might not get to see them. Even if he did-especially if Caroline had been right and there had been foul play-how could he be sure that the records he had been given access to had not been tampered with?

From his own past experience he knew that investigators who took no for an answer and went home rarely got any answers at all. The detectives who stayed in the game and pressed it, who sometimes didn't go home for days were the ones who got the resolutions they were looking for. It was why he knew what he had to do next. Get to Dr. Stephenson right away and ask her point-blank if she thought Caroline had been murdered.

It was an approach that more often than not got some kind of concrete response. Usually it came in the way a question was answered, a hesitation or an awkward wording of a phrase, or by the person's eye movement or body language, sometimes by all three. Rarely did someone involved with a crime not somehow give themselves away. Proving it, of course, was something else. But that was not his purpose now, only to get some sense that Caroline had been right, that she had deliberately been given some kind of toxin that had killed her. And if she had, to see if Dr. Stephenson had personally been involved.