‘She’s not shy, is she?’ Sheila smiled, tipped her head at Maddie.
‘No,’ I said. Cranky, opinionated, moody? Yes. Shy? No. ‘Wait till the honeymoon’s over.’
‘You get the worst of it,’ she said. ‘Mothers do. Do you work with the police much?’
‘Oh no, not at all. They wanted to talk to me about a case they’re covering. The suspect’s an ex-client.’
‘Sounds very dramatic.’
‘It’s not usually,’ I said. ‘The job is ninety per cent waiting around or looking up forms and checking facts and figures.’ The other ten per cent could be particularly hairy, though. I’d been stabbed and shot at on two previous cases where things had turned very nasty.
We were interrupted by the arrival of Ray and Tom. Tea and cakes were devoured and then the demands of domesticity pushed work from my mind.
Saturday had been dominated by the job. Sunday, I restricted myself to a perfunctory phone call to Agnes arranging to see her Monday morning.
Agnes was looking quite chipper when I arrived. She’d made an excellent recovery from the flu. I declined her offer of tea.
I was anxious to get straight down to business.
‘I went on Saturday,’ I began, ‘but Lily didn’t seem very well at all. She was wandering about when I got there and later she lost track of time. She was talking about the war years and her husband, George. She got quite distressed too, frightened, claimed that people were stealing from her, trying to poison her. Sounds just like what happened at Homelea.’
Agnes shook her head slowly. ‘Oh, Lily,’ she muttered.
‘What did Charles say? Did you see him?’
She nodded. ‘He called in briefly after he’d been to the hospital. Dr Montgomery is doing a full assessment today but he’s pretty certain that it is Alzheimer’s. He said he hoped he could settle her and she’d be able to move to one of the nursing homes who specialise in it…care of the mentally frail he called it.’ She swallowed before carrying on.
‘Charles mentioned the business of me being next of kin too but Dr Montgomery said it would confuse the records and I was welcome to visit at any time. He didn’t see any need to complicate matters.’
‘So we’re going to have to find everything out from Charles?’
‘Yes.’
‘Agnes, if anything happens to Lily, who inherits her estate?’
She blinked in surprise. ‘Charles, there’s no one else. Why?’
‘It’s probably irrelevant but I just wondered if Lily had amended her will recently, made any changes.’
‘Not that I know of. I don’t understand…’ Her face creased deep with confusion.
‘Well, I’m trying to consider every possible angle. If there’s been any deliberate maltreatment of Lily we need to think about motives. Who’d want to make her ill, why? What benefit could there be? If someone stood to gain financially…’