Cath Staincliffe - Go Not Gently

‘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.’

‘We’ve been having a chat about Mrs Palmer.’

‘Hello.’ She came further into the room. She wore a cherry-red wool suit, matching lipstick and piles of jewellery. Her hair was streaked a dozen different shades and gently curled. She was probably in her fifties though it was hard to tell. Her face was plastered with thick orange foundation though she wore only a trace of eye make-up. No one on earth had ever had skin that colour. It looked like jaundice mixed with sunburn. ‘How is Mrs Palmer?’ She smiled. The red lipstick gave her teeth a yellow cast.

‘Quite subdued,’ I said.

‘They’ll do their very best for her there,’ she said. ‘Dr Montgomery is excellent, isn’t he, Gail?’

Mrs Knight nodded.

‘It was all so quick,’ I began. Hoping to plant a few doubts in one of their minds.

‘It may seem like that,’ said Mrs Knight, ‘but the dementia may have been developing for many months before she came to us.’

I’d been here before. ‘It was more sudden than most, though, wasn’t it? She was only here a few weeks and now she’s in hospital.’

‘We are dealing with people here,’ said Mrs Valley-Brown, ‘such a variety. You know yourself how a common cold can lay one person low but only give another a sniffle. I think in a case like this we must remember to look at the individual, not just the illness.’ She smiled, tilting her head on one side in an attempt to look sympathetic, I think. So where did the platitudes get me? Yes, it was a bit quick but c’est la vie!