Go Not Gently (10 page)

‘You could find out what he’s been told and see if he’s any plans to see Dr Montgomery. It might be worth asking if he’ll nominate you as another close contact, with him being so far away.’

‘Yes. I’ll try him tonight.’

‘I can pop round tomorrow and fill you in on my visit and you can tell me what he says then.’

Thursday dawned with a layer of snow two inches deep. Rare for Manchester, though the outlying hills get their fair share. The kids were delirious, out in wellies, coats and pyjamas before breakfast, scraping snow together to make a snowman. They weren’t making much progress. I went out and gave them a hand – showed them how to roll a snowball round, make it bigger and bigger. The snow was just right, made that delicious squeaking sound when we squashed it. We created a very short snowman complete with pebble eyes, a carrot nose and a baseball hat.

Ray took Maddie and Tom to school and was busy in the cellar when I set off to see Agnes.

As soon as I was in the room she crossed to the sideboard, opened a drawer and took something out. She came over and handed me a bottle of tablets. ‘I found these,’ she said, ‘Lily’s tablets.’

‘Where?’

‘She has these little boots, fur-lined. They were inside one of them.’

‘Do you think she’d hidden them?’

Agnes shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She kept the boots near the bed, like spare slippers, the bottle could have been knocked off. I didn’t find them till I was sorting through her other things.’

‘Dr Goulden will be relieved.’

‘I don’t want you to tell him.’

‘Why?’

‘Look.’ She pulled another bottle from her pocket. ‘These are the same thing, thioridazine – I had them for a while myself – but Lily’s are different, the colour and the markings.’

I took a tablet out of each bottle. True, they were different colours, Lily’s were a pale yellow while Agnes’ were white. ‘They could be a different dosage,’ I said, ‘or made by different manufacturers.’ I looked again at the labels on the bottles. Both said they were 25 mg. ‘They are the same strength but as far as I know doctors deal with different drug companies and some use cheaper versions of the more famous brands. I’m sure that’s all it is, the same thing from different places.’

‘Can you check,’ Agnes asked, ‘that they are what they say?’

‘You think they might have made a mistake with the prescription?’

‘It’s possible.’

I put the tablets back and screwed up the lids. ‘It would explain why Goulden was so anxious when they went missing. And why Lily got worse. Maybe that’s it – an awful mistake and he’d only just realised…I’ll have them analysed. I think I know someone who could get them into a lab.’ I slipped the bottle into my coat pocket.

Agnes sat down. I began to tell her about my visit to Kingsfield.  ‘Lily didn’t say very much. The medication she’s on makes her sleepy. But she mentioned you.’

‘She did?’ Pleasure lit her eyes.

‘Yes, she was worried you wouldn’t visit. Perhaps she’s aware it’s harder for you to get to. She said Agnes won’t come. I explained you were busy and told her I was sure you’d come when you could.’

Agnes nodded, her face slightly flushed.

‘Oh, and she said Nora had been to see her.’

Agnes started. ‘Nora. What Nora?’

‘I’m sure she said Nora. After she talked about you not coming she said Nora came.’

Bright red spots bloomed on Agnes’ cheeks. ‘There’s no Nora,’ she said emphatically, ‘she’s talking nonsense.’

‘Perhaps it’s one of the other patients,’ I suggested.

Agnes toyed with her brooch, a gold spray of lily of the valley. I wondered whether she wore them to satisfy that nervous tic, like people who are lost without earrings to fidget with or those who keep their hair long so they can twirl it round their fingers.

‘The staff seem very nice,’ I broke the silence, ‘although it feels much more like a hospital than Homelea. Lily’s in a room with three other beds but I didn’t meet any of the other patients.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She gazed at the flames that were licking the fake coal. She seemed a million miles away. Unlike the determined woman who insisted I take the case.

‘Agnes, is everything all right?’

‘Yes.’ She shook herself from her reverie.

‘Did you speak to Charles?’

‘Yes. Mrs Valley-Brown rang him on Tuesday to let him know about the transfer. She told him there was no cause for alarm, that Lily had become difficult to manage and the care she needed could best be provided at the hospital. He didn’t think there was anything untoward about the haste.’

‘What about naming you as a nearby contact?’

She sighed. ‘He’s coming up tomorrow to visit and he’ll see Dr Montgomery then. He said he’d ask about it. Charles has no objection.’

What should my next move be? I should probably go back to Homelea and try to find out more about the night of Lily’s move and Dr Goulden’s outburst over the tablets. I could also accompany Agnes to Kingsfield, chat to the staff about Lily’s condition.

‘When are you going to see her?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Agnes. ‘If Charles is going tomorrow I may leave it till Saturday.’ She was less then keen.

‘We could go up together,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t know what time would suit me yet but I can ring you.’

‘Yes.’ She rose from her chair.

‘Meanwhile I’ll pop into Homelea and see what I can find out.’

She saw me to the door. Said goodbye. I was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of working for Agnes. She blew hot and cold about the case; urging me to get the tablets checked one minute and going all vague and dreamy on me the next. I felt she was being evasive with me whereas I’d originally found her to be forthright and honest. Was it a false first impression or had something happened to change her?

Diane was settled with a drink in our favourite corner when I arrived at the pub. It’d been our watering hole for years and to date the brewery had resisted the temptation to turn a perfectly pleasant local boozer into some theme pub for the younger end of the market. Consequently it was quiet enough for us to have a good chat and you could always get a seat. The beer was good too. Creamy Boddies kept just cool enough by the landlord.

I bought a pint and joined Diane.

‘You look brighter than you sounded,’ I remarked.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Good news.’

‘What?’

She grinned.

‘Go on!’

‘I’ve got a show,’ she beamed.

‘What! Where?’

‘The Cornerhouse.’

‘Oh, Diane.’

‘Three weeks, first-floor gallery.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘And…’ She put her glass down.

‘There’s more?’

‘A tour of the North West after.’

‘Oh, wow! When did you hear?’ I squirmed with pleasure.

‘This morning. The woman from The Cornerhouse rang. They want it up in October.’

‘Fame and fortune.’

‘Well, fame maybe. I won’t make anything unless it sells.’

‘Course it will. They’ll be falling over each other to buy you. Trendy or what?’

‘I’ll have to get a serious haircut.’

‘What?’

‘Well, they all have haircuts, don’t they, very stylish.’

‘It’s your prints they’re after. Besides, what do you call that?’ I signalled in the direction of Diane’s blatant strawberry-coloured wedge.

‘Go on!’ she said.

‘Well, it’s hardly natural, is it? I’d say it was a pretty definite hairstyle.’

She giggled.

I shared her delight at the news. She deserved some recognition. I loved her prints – silk screen and batik – but she barely made a living out of them.  We talked some more about the exhibition and the work it would involve before the conversation turned to me.

‘I’m fairly busy,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know how long it will last. It could just fizzle out.’ I explained in general the job Agnes was asking me to do. I always confide in Diane; I never name names and I trust her not to go blabbing about what she’s heard.

‘There are a few weird things about it all, her rapid decline and this business with the pills, but it may all be perfectly innocent.’

‘And why anyway?’ said Diane.

‘Why what?’

‘Why would anyone want to make this woman ill? Who benefits? Hey, maybe you should check the will – has she recently changed it in favour of the nursing home? Does her family know? That could be it. Sign on the dotted line and bingo – soon as she pops her clogs they get their hands .on the money.’

I laughed. It was a preposterous idea. Nevertheless I would find out who were the beneficiaries if Lily died.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘if you wanted to kill someone there’s quicker ways, aren’t there? More certain too. Especially someone frail. A serious fall when she’s alone in her room, perhaps.’

‘Ah, but sudden death,’ said Diane. ‘They’d have to do a post mortem.’

‘On an eighty-five-year-old? They’d probably get away with it as long as the GP was satisfied it was natural cause of death. Besides she’s not dead and as I said, it could all be above board and I’ll be filling in the Housing Benefit forms again next week if something else doesn’t turn up.’

We carried on till closing time, then parted company, riding our bikes away in different directions. The snow had turned to watery brown fudge along the pavements and most of the roads were clear. As I put my bike away I noticed the snowman was still there though the grass was no longer white.

The dog down the road was barking steadily on, liking the sound of its own voice. Didn’t its owners ever get sick of the noise? ‘Shut up!’ I yelled as I put my key in the lock. It never even paused for breath.

I think it was only the fact that I’d been there before that prevented Mrs Knight, the matron at Homelea, from telling me to bog off.

I knocked on her office door and she called for me to come in. 

‘I’d just like a word about Mrs Palmer,’ I said, closing the door behind me. ‘I was so sorry to hear about her transfer. I’ve been to see her and she doesn’t seem at all well. What happened?’

She opened her mouth and half rose. Then thought better of it. ‘Please sit down.’ She gestured to the spare chair.

‘As you know, Mrs Valley-Brown was happy to have Mrs Palmer here as long as there was no adverse effect on our other residents. But I’m afraid we were getting quite a lot of wandering, she was increasingly restless and then she was suffering with night incontinence much more frequently. Things became very difficult on Sunday night. Mrs Palmer was extremely distressed and failed to respond at all to the medication we gave her. She became aggressive and was obviously suffering from delusions.’ She spoke calmly and quietly, using the sort of soothing tones reserved for bad news. And she never smiled.

‘What sort of delusions?’

‘Paranoid fantasies. She was being poisoned, someone was stealing all her things. These aren’t uncommon. We felt she was a danger to herself if not to others. Dr Goulden was called out and he had her admitted to Kingsfield,’

‘Couldn’t she have gone into a residential nursing home instead?’

‘Dr Goulden felt Kingsfield was the most appropriate alternative. There she’ll get a full assessment and a detailed care plan. The psycho-geriatrician may recommend a private nursing home if her behaviour can be managed with medication. After all, it was her failure to respond to the drug treatment we were using that was most worrying and the doctor didn’t want to prescribe anything else on top of that in case of side effects.’

‘That was the thioridazine?’

Mrs Knight nodded. ‘Yes, and we’d tried a sedative as well but nothing worked.’

‘It was the thioridazine that went missing?’ I asked.

‘Sorry?’ She looked shocked.

‘Miss Donlan said there’s been a row about missing tablets. Dr Goulden as good as accused her of stealing them.’

‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘Dr Goulden was a little brusque. We have to account carefully for all the drugs here and he felt there’d been some laxity. Neither of us realised it at the time but they’d been returned by one of the care assistants.’

She was a lousy liar. A muscle twitched in her cheek and she couldn’t meet my eye.

‘Then why couldn’t Dr Goulden find them on the Tuesday when Miss Donlan was here?’

‘The silly girl had put them on the wrong shelf,’ she replied.

‘Is it common practice to allow all the staff access to the medicine store?’

She swallowed. ‘No, but there are occasions when we may have to do that, When other priorities take precedence.’

Before I could quiz her any more there was a tapping sound at the door and it opened.

‘Mrs Valley-Brown,’ said Mrs Knight, ‘this is…I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name?’

‘Kilkenny,’ I said, ‘Sal Kilkenny.’