‘Then she falls,’ Agnes spoke calmly, ‘if she did fall.’
I thought of the other patient with her riddles about the fall. Was she pushed? They wouldn’t dare, would they? But no one had seen her fall, neither Mrs Li nor the nurse we’d seen. Who’d found her or seen it happen?
‘All right – if she did fall. So she has an operation to sort out the bleeding in her brain.’
‘She gets an infection.’
‘But apparently unrelated to the operation or the medication.’
There was a pause. We’d reached the end of the story so far.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘What’s it all for?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Agnes, ‘but I wasn’t born yesterday. I think you should tell the police everything you’ve found out, let them deal with it.’
I had my doubts, but rang off promising Agnes I’d contact the police.
Back in the garden I set to weeding and rehearsed what I could tell the police. It didn’t amount to anything they’d want to hear – a mishmash of connections, suspicions and concerns. The only hard evidence of any wrongdoing was the falsely labelled pills and the police were already looking into that.
I struggled with a crop of dandelions along the edge of the flagged path. It wasn’t a crime for a GP to be eager to refer patients to a well-regarded local psycho-geriatric unit, even if his brother-in-law did work there. It wasn’t a crime for the same GP to order drugs from his wife’s pharmaceutical company or for the city’s neurosurgeon to sit on the board of that company. It wasn’t a crime for a GP to lose his temper.
I was right. There were too many coincidences for comfort. But I wasn’t going to go making a fool of myself in front of the police. Let them look into the mix-up with the tablets, meanwhile I needed more idea of how this all connected to Lily Palmer. Suppose she had been pushed – she was very ill now in hospital – did somebody want Lily dead? I threw down the trowel, washed the soil off my hands and rang Agnes back.
‘Did you ever check whether Charles was the only beneficiary in Lily’s will?’
‘No.’
‘Can you check for me, find out where the will’s held and if she made any recent changes?’
‘I can do. He’s up for the weekend, I’ll be seeing him at the hospital. You think that might be behind it all? Lily only had the house, nothing else. That was sold off so there would be enough to pay the charges at Homelea.’
‘And she wasn’t there very long so there’d be quite a lot still left. I’m sorry, it’s a horrible thought, but I think we should check.’
‘But Charles would contest it, if there was anything like that, surely.’