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he was dying?”
    Doc’s eyes held pity. “He was a microbiologist, Dorothy. He fought it, fought it hard, but the last couple of days, he knew he’d lost the battle, and then he just accepted it.” Doc seemed to have an obstruction in his throat, too. “He was a great man.”
    There were other questions I wanted to ask, but I knew I’d start bawling like a baby if I opened my mouth. Alan must have seen my chin quiver. He nodded reassuringly and addressed Doc.
    â€œI’m sorry I’ll never have the chance to know him. He sounds like a remarkable person. I suppose it was the usual pattern for someone his age—fell and broke his hip and contracted pneumonia?”
    â€œNot this time. No broken bones. Anyway, his bones were strong as an ox’s. Came from all that exercise he always got, and eating healthy. No, no telling how he got it, really.”
    â€œWe had that freak cold spell just about then,” Peggy put in. “Down in the fifties, Dorothy, forties one night. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that’s happened around here in August! And Kevin didn’t have a furnace, you know, only that old woodstove.”
    â€œHis woodstove isn’t all that old,” said Doc. “It’s a modern Franklin stove, and Kevin had that cabin good and tight. He liked to be warm, the way old people do. Anyway, you don’t get pneumonia from being cold. You get it from a virus, or a bacterium, depending. He must’ve picked up a bug somewhere, and then took too long to get to a doctor.”
    â€œNow, Doc, you’re
not
going to start that again, are you?” Peggy shook her head. “He blames himself. Thinks if he’d been here, Kevin would’ve waltzed right in to the office when he first started to cough. It’s just plain stupid! No, Doc, let me have my say. I’ve told you a dozen times: Kevin always did think he could take care of himself, and never went to see you till he was sick as a dog. Why, that time he fell down his front steps, he never even went in at all!”
    I recovered my voice. “Fell down the steps?”
    â€œYes, Doc saw him limping down Main Street one day and asked him what happened. He said he’d sprained his ankle. And would you believe he wouldn’t even let Doc X-ray it? Said he knew it wasn’t broken, and an Ace bandage was all he needed.”
    â€œGood grief! What did he do, slip on an icy step?”
    â€œNo, it was in the spring,” said Doc. “Just tripped, I guess. That was when I started agitating for him to get some help in the house, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Just said he was going to get new glasses so he wouldn’t trip over his own feet like an old fool. Well, I couldn’t force him to do anything, could I?”
    He sounded a little defensive.
    â€œIt is difficult, isn’t it?” said Alan tactfully. “We worry about the elderly and try to look after them, but they don’t want to give up their independence, and one can understand, really. My own mother is a case in point.” He went off into a rather rambling reminiscence that eventually turned the subject to cats and crocheting, and we finished the evening on a pleasant note.
    But when Alan and I were driving back to the hotel, I said, “He fell down the steps.”
    â€œYes. That’s one accident. Do you suppose we’ll find others?”

4
    T HE next morning we spent some time planning a strategy. First I got out the notebook and entered our meager discoveries:
Circumstances of death No broken bones. Died in hospital. Cause of pneumonia not known. Bug? Where had he been lately?
Who was present? Not Doc Foley, beforehand. Who
was
?
    â€œWe haven’t gotten very far, have we?”
    â€œNot very. But a little farther than we were. We know your doctor—whom I like very much, by the way—wasn’t present immediately before Kevin became