Murder With Mercy by Veronica Heley Page B

Had she written anything down on the calendar?
    Oh. Yes, Surgery at ten o’clock, to see the practice nurse. Not a nice woman; not nice at all. Called herself Desiree, if you please. In the old days they’d never
have employed someone as overweight and unhealthy-looking, but nowadays doctors didn’t have much choice, did they? It was all committees and partnerships and she didn’t know what. Unfortunately, since her dear doctor Ben died, she’d had to put up with seeing Desiree at regular intervals in the surgery.
    Desiree was big and black and beautiful. Well, big and black; a beauty she was not. When Desiree took your blood pressure, you had to turn your head away. How could a practice nurse hold down a job with bad breath? Desiree called you ‘dearie’ and ‘pet’, and she didn’t listen when asked to use your proper name. Desiree had no respect for senior citizens. In the old days Desiree would have called an older woman ‘Madam’ … There was a musical with that title, wasn’t there, long ago? ‘Call me Madam’?
    Desiree said that they were all in a flapdoodle about Florrie killing her auntie. Something to do with the number of pills Ruby took, and the niece … the fat one, what was her name? Silly name, something to do with a place older than time? Got it! Petra. A city half as old as time. Apparently, Petra was going to sue everyone in sight, saying the doctors had been careless, giving Ruby too many pills. Petra had always been trouble, right from the word go. She remembered Ruby saying …
    Now what was it Ruby used to say?
    It had gone. Maybe it would come back later.
    Everyone at the surgery was upset about Petra. If she found a solicitor who’d take the case on a ‘No Win, No Fee’ basis, then the doctors would be in real trouble. That couldn’t be allowed. After all, she knew who’d helped poor Ruby to have a good night’s sleep for once.
    She’d better call round and have a word with Petra next day.
    Had she anything in her diary? Where was her diary, anyway?
Wednesday afternoon
    Ellie hesitated. Was this the right place? It didn’t look like a house in which someone had died recently. Far from it.
    It was a substantial detached house, probably built about 1920, on a main road. A dropped kerb allowed cars to enter a paved forecourt through electronically-controlled wrought-iron gates tipped with gold. Ellie counted four cars on the forecourt: one luxury model with tinted windows, two smaller runabouts and a builders’ van. One of the smaller cars was bright red. You couldn’t change the colour of your car just because someone in the house had died, but it did strike an incongruous note.
    It wasn’t only the cars which gave her pause, for even as she approached, an effigy of Father Christmas on a sleigh, complete with reindeer, was being hoisted into position on the front of the house. Three men were currently working to secure the installation, easing it into place with many a merry quip and yell of, ‘Watch it!’ and, ‘Left hand down a bit!’
    The decoration – if you could call it that – was dotted with hundreds of light bulbs which would dispense signs of seasonal cheer to the neighbourhood. In mid November.
    Ellie consulted the piece of paper on which Evan had written the number of Freddie and Anita’s house. Surprising as it might seem, this was definitely it. Ellie dived for shelter from the drizzle into a deep porch and located the doorbell.
    The front door opened to a blast of warm air, some heavy rock music, and the whine of a vacuum cleaner. A woman in her forties, pretty enough in an insipid way, held the door open. She was talking into a mobile phone, complaining that someone had let her down. Was this really the right house?
    Ellie hesitated.
    â€˜Yes?’ The woman shut off her phone. ‘We don’t buy at the door.’
    Ellie reddened. Did she