Go Not Gently - [2]

When Agnes expressed her concern to Mrs Knight, the matron, she was invited in for a chat with Mrs Valley-Brown, the manager. Mrs Valley-Brown and her husband ran Homelea.

Matron took care of nursing those residents who needed it. Mrs Valley-Brown told Agnes that Lily had Alzheimer’s and that the doctor had prescribed a tranquilliser to help calm her down. If she responded well to the medication her behaviour would settle down, she’d be less distressed. They also had sleeping pills they could administer when needed as Lily had begun to suffer from insomnia, restlessness and occasional night incontinence. Lily was welcome to stay at Homelea as long as her behaviour didn’t adversely affect the other residents.

The kettle clicked off and I made myself a coffee, took it over to my desk. There’d been something a little strange at that point in the interview. I’d asked Agnes what would happen if Lily got much worse. Her hand flew to the jet brooch on her coat and she’d squeezed it tight. Otherwise, she completely ignored my question. A pause and then she began talking about Lily’s marriage. Something in my question had frightened Agnes. Fear of the death that might follow or the thought of increasing frailty? Whatever it was, I hadn’t got an answer.

I skimmed the rest of my notes. Lily had married, had a son and daughter. The girl had died in childhood but Charles lived down in Devon, visited twice a year, wrote monthly. He’d helped sort out the move to Homelea. Lily’s husband, George, had gone missing in action in the Far East in 1944. Once Charles left home Lily had worked as a secretary and book-keeper for a small firm. Since retirement she’d been fit and active. She’d fallen twice at home, fractured her wrist the first time and dislocated her shoulder the second. The move to Homelea had been at her own instigation. Apart from the shoulder and a certain nervousness about falling Lily had been fit as a fiddle when she left her own house for Homelea. There had been no sign of mental frailty then.

Eight weeks.

I tilted my chair back dangerously and made a survey of my office while I let the information trickle round my brain. The blind over the basement window was broken. Roller blinds are about as reliable as flip-top bins. The year planner that I’d put up the previous January in the hope it’d help me plan my time was still blank apart from school holidays. My sort of work doesn’t get planned. It’s all response and reaction. Go here, do this, try that, meet so-and-so.

The rest of the room was dusty but reasonably neat, shabby carpet, painted filing cabinet, a set of three dining chairs. A stack of reference books on a shelf, phone and answerphone, a pretty ceramic plate wall clock the only personal touch.

I tidied up the desk, switched the answerphone on and prepared to leave. I was at the Dobsons’ front door when I heard my office phone. I clattered down the stairs, flung myself at the desk and yanked the answerphone connection out of the socket, interrupting my recorded voice in mid-greeting. Pressing the off button never does any good; it’s one of those slow response – maybe I’ll do it this time maybe I won’t – models.

‘Hello. Sal Kilkenny Investigations, Sal Kilkenny speaking.’

‘Oh.’ Confusion at the other end of the line. ‘Erm, I just thought…’ Laugh. Young, male, nervous. Either the answerphone, or the fact that I was a woman, had thrown him. Most people think Sal’s a man. My Yellow Pages ad is carefully worded. It says female detectives available but doesn’t imply it’s a one-woman show. No point in advertising for abusive calls and attracting all the headcases.

More nervous laughter.

‘How can I help?’ Not ‘Can I?’ but ‘How can I?’. Make the client confident you can do the job.

‘Well, it’s my wife. Do you…look, I’ve never…I haven’t any idea what you charge or even if…’

Wish he’d spit it out. ‘I can offer an initial appointment, no obligation. You can discuss the matter with us, find out the sort of services we can offer and take it from there. Or I can offer free advice now if you want to talk about it over the phone.’

‘I see. Erm…well. Oh, shit, sorry.’ He hung up. Caught in the act, I’d guess.

I plugged in the answerphone again hoping it wouldn’t take revenge at sudden disconnection by playing up and taking half-messages again, refusing to playback or to play the announcement, confusing people with uncomfortable silences and sequences of beeps. I sometimes spent hours searching for fragments of communication, whizzing the tape back and forth. I suppose the answerphone matched the window blind really. Crap. And not a true reflection of the quality of work I could offer.

Positive thinking.

After all, two clients in one day can’t be bad, even if one did ring off.

CHAPTER TWO

The drizzle looked set to run for days, the sky was dense and sullen. I did my best to ignore it as I walked up to school to collect Maddie and Tom.

‘We had wet play again,’ Maddie complained. ‘I hate wet play.’

‘But you play inside, don’t you? Games and things?’