Go Not Gently

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I cycled round to Homelea. Heavy cloud cover threatened squalls of rain and made it dark for late afternoon. Homelea was a picture of warmth and welcome. Cheery yellow light spilled from the large bay windows, and as I locked my bike at the side, two women in wheelchairs, laden with shopping bags, were pushed up the ramp by young assistants.

Inside I could smell onions and a whiff of roasting fat before my nose clogged up again. It was a busy time of day with residents congregating downstairs for afternoon tea and staff preparing the dining room for the evening meal. In the general hubbub no one asked me my business.

I followed the corridor round and knocked twice on the office door while twisting the handle. I heard a faint ‘Come in.’ I opened the door. Mrs Knight was at the desk. She looked up in enquiry, then as she recognised me her face twisted with dismay before she had a chance to mask it.

‘Mrs Knight, we need to talk.’

‘I don’t see what…’ She rose, flustered.

‘Don’t you?’ I spoke sharply. ‘It’s about Lily Palmer. And those tablets she was given.’

‘I don’t have to listen to this.’ She was outraged. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, barging in here, taking that tone.’

‘I’m a private detective,’ I said. I sat in the chair opposite her.

She remained standing, her palms braced on the edge of the desk. She stared at me, her mouth slightly agape.

‘My client was concerned about the care that Mrs Palmer was receiving here – with good cause it seems.’

‘What are you implying?’ She rallied. ‘Our residents are well looked after, we’re inspected regularly by Social Services. We’ve never had any complaints. If you wish to make a complaint I suggest you contact the local authority, but I can assure you-’

‘The tablets that went missing,’ I persisted. ‘There was something different about them, wasn’t there?’

She frowned. ‘They were a different brand, that’s all,’ she said dismissively.

‘Oh, just a different brand? So any of the patients could have had them?’

‘Well, no. We always keep individual prescriptions separate, to ensure we can monitor the course. It reduces the risk of giving anyone the wrong medication.’

‘Why did you lie about the missing bottle turning up again?’

‘I didn’t – one of the girls found them, like I said.’

I shook my head slowly. ‘They can’t have done. I know. I’ve got the tablets.’

She clasped her hands together. ‘What?…You took them?’

‘They were found in Lily’s slippers. I don’t think anyone deliberately stole them. Why did you lie about them being found?’

There were a couple of beats while she weighed up whether to confess. She took a deep breath. ‘It was important to reassure people that there’d been no negligence. Dr Goulden was very clear about that.’

‘He told you to say they’d turned up?’

‘He said it could reflect very badly on us here. There’s a very strict check kept on the medicines.’ She mumbled something else, her head lowered, the neat black cap of hair swinging forward to hide her expression.

‘Pardon?’

‘He said he would see to the paperwork.’

‘You didn’t think it was strange? Such concern about one small bottle of tablets?’

‘In the wrong hands-’

‘But he was very agitated about it, wasn’t he? He virtually accused Miss Donlan of stealing them. He had a go at you.’

‘He has a short temper,’ she couldn’t bring herself to be critical, ‘he’d had a bad night.’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Mrs Knight, where did you usually get prescriptions made up?’

‘The chemist round the corner.’

‘But these were different?’

She frowned. ‘Yes, the doctor brought them himself. They often get samples from the drug companies. He said we might as well try them, they were the right prescription for Mrs Palmer and they’d probably work out cheaper in the long run. I really don’t know why you’re making such a song and dance about it. And if you’ve got the tablets,’ she said briskly, ‘then they can be returned and everything can be straightened out.’ She gave me a bright look.

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘You see, there was something wrong with those tablets.’

‘Wrong? What do you mean?’

‘They were four times the stated dosage. Lily Palmer was being given huge amounts of thioridazine – enough to make her very poorly. She’d become more agitated and confused, she’d have trouble sleeping. And every time she was given something to help her sleep it would react with the high level of drugs and increase her confusion. She was aggressive the night she was admitted to hospital, wasn’t she, stumbling about, hallucinating, thinking people were trying to harm her?’

‘Oh, my goodness.’ She sank into her chair. Her shock seemed genuine.

‘We’ve had them analysed. They definitely contain the wrong amount of the drug.’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she repeated. ‘It’s the sort of accident you dread. How on earth could it…’ She didn’t finish her question, her thoughts leaping ahead. ‘Surely we couldn’t be liable. We gave them in good faith. There was no negligence here. The label had the wrong dosage on – how could we possibly know?’

‘I don’t know which chemist made them up,’ I said.

‘They were from Malden’s,’ she said. ‘Malden Medical Supplies – we deal with them for all our regular stock: dressings, zimmer frames, disposables – that sort of thing. When I saw the tablets I remember being surprised because I didn’t know they did pharmaceuticals too. I assumed it was a new departure.’

Malden’s. I was surprised too but I needed to concentrate on getting as much from Mrs Knight as I could while she was still reeling from the news I’d given her.

‘What about Ernest Theakston?’

‘Sorry?’ She narrowed her eyes as if to focus her hearing.

‘Ernest Theakston, he was here until he got transferred to Kingsfield. What medication was he on?’

‘I don’t know.’ She riffled through the card index on her desk and then stood up and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out another batch of file cards.

‘Was he on thioridazine too? Or anything from a different chemist?’

She found the card and scanned it. ‘No.’ She looked across at me puzzled. What was I getting at?

‘Mrs Palmer’s tablets, they were the first time Dr Goulden had supplied them directly?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Now and again he’ll give us a free sample. Like I said, he gets so much from the reps.’

‘But not in the case of Mr Theakston?’

‘No.’

‘And you’ve not had any drugs from Malden’s before?’

‘No.’

‘How long was Mr Theakston here?’

‘Four years.’ Nothing like the quick sojourn that Lily had made.

‘And why did he go into Kingsfield?’

‘He’d deteriorated. Dr Goulden wanted an assessment.’

‘Deteriorated? In what way? What was wrong with him?’

‘Alzheimer’s. We can cope with the early stages but when it really progresses and they need twenty-four-hour care there’s better provision elsewhere.’

‘What happened to Mr Theakston?’

‘I don’t know.’

It was frustrating. I’d anticipated some dramatic pattern linking the fate of Lily Palmer and Ernest Theakston but their histories seemed quite distinct. Ernest Theakston, like some of the people from Aspen Lodge, had stayed several years in the home before going to the Marion Unit and he’d not had any dodgy drugs.

She obviously didn’t know about Goulden’s connection with Malden’s and I wasn’t going to enlighten her.

‘This is awful,’ she said. ‘We certainly won’t want to use them in future, not for anything like that. This is just…awful.’ She put away the cards and returned to her desk. ‘What’s Dr Goulden said? He must be furious.’

‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’

‘Oh dear. I’ll have to tell Mrs Valley-Brown. Look,’ she swallowed and swung back her hair, ‘what I said, about the tablets being found again, that doesn’t need to come out, does it? I’d no idea then…I was just following Dr Goulden’s advice. If I’d known…’

And if he’d said jump off a cliff? I didn’t reply. She coloured.

‘I’ll see myself out.’

The clouds had opened and gusts of wind made cycling a feat of endurance. The battery in my back light had gone all weedy and I prayed the weak red glow was visible to the cars that raced past me.

Somewhere in the darker corners of my imagination I’d been expecting to uncover some major systematic crime – Goulden doing nasty things with drugs to his patients. But Ernest Theakston didn’t fit my theory. He hadn’t had any medication to speak of. One of the other patients, Philip Braithwaite from Aspen Lodge, the one with the brain tumour, he’d been on something, I could remember his daughter telling me.

So what? I kept coming back to the bloody great hole in the argument – why? What possible reason could there be for making people ill instead of well? For kicks? Stories like that hit the press every so often but it was a pretty remote possibility. I should find out what had happened to Ernest Theakston. Maybe that would shed some light on things, connect what had happened to him with Lily’s situation, or with Malden Medical Supplies.

The most plausible scenario so far was that someone at Malden’s had ballsed up the prescription.

And the most Ken Goulden could be accused of was nepotism, a short temper and failure to recognise an adverse reaction to the medicines he’d prescribed. But something else about the Malden’s link hovered just beyond my consciousness. I tried to focus on it, something Harry had mentioned when he’d given me the information, a little thing…It was no good, I couldn’t bring it into view.

I was sure Mrs Knight had known nothing about the link between the doctor and Malden’s or that there was any problem with the drugs. She hadn’t tried to hide anything. She’d been stunned by my revelations. Her fear for her own reputation, fear of litigation, were at the forefront, not a fear of being found out. Strange woman, prickly but obviously scared of Goulden – and how odd the way she never smiled. Why had she gone into nursing? She didn’t seem particularly caring of people. For all her shock-horror expressions of concern she’d never once asked me how Lily Palmer was.