Joy Cometh With The Mourning, page 9
part #1 of Reverend Norton Series
Looking at the bruises and flexing the ankle he asked calmly. “You really did fall down the stairs, and not get beaten up by someone?”
“I have two witnesses who were rather surprised to see me land in a heap at their feet,” she said tartly. “Why do you ask? Do they beat up the priest here, regularly?”
“You did collect a few impressive bruises in the process,” he said, ignoring the lure. “In my opinion, however, nothing is broken. Unfortunately we don’t have a radiographer here. It’s the ankle that is troubling you most, is it? I’d settle for giving it a few days’ rest and elevation, and if it is still troubling you, we can send you back to the city for X-rays.” He scribbled a script. “Here. There is a pharmacy just up the street.”
“What are you prescribing? I don’t need painkillers. It’s fine if I am not walking on it, or if you aren’t twisting or prodding it.”
That got the first sign of approval he’d given her, in the shape of a slight smile. “Unless it is chronic, pain is a warning.” He crumpled the script. “Most patients seem to think that the only reason for seeing a doctor is to collect scripts for painkillers and antibiotics.” He stood up, plainly a signal that it was time for her to leave.
“I do have a couple of further matters, which don’t relate to my ankle,” she said, remaining seated. “Firstly, I need to know what to do with Reverend Hallam’s medicines. The prescription ones have your name on them.”
“Take them to the pharmacy. They will dispose of them according to the regulations. And what else?”
“When I worked in the city, there was a fairly well established set of procedures, and contacts for dealing with… problems, family violence, drugs, alcohol particularly, but ill-health and age issues too. Um, we had several friendly medical and police and social work contacts we could turn to for advice, because as priests we’re not always sure what we’re seeing. And sometimes they would reverse the situation, particularly with the elderly and let us know when we should visit someone. I wanted you to know that I am available to do that, and to ask who to best to talk to about other issues.”
“We’ve got a district nurse, Grogan for police matters, and a psychiatrist visits every two weeks. I don’t foresee myself needing your help, but I’ll remember the offer. Now I really must see my next patient. Don’t forget to fill in the paperwork to get your records transferred.”
So Joy limped out, and the Doctor called his next patient — who was the only one in the waiting room. The receptionist was looking considerably less harassed now, but was still busy on the headset phone, while filing some papers and, seemingly in the gaps, typing information on the computer. “Well, that’s all, thank you, Mrs. Jenkins. Three o’clock tomorrow. I’ve booked him a double session. And please ask him not to be late again, and congratulations on the new job.”
She disengaged from the chatty Mrs. Jenkins with a skill that Joy could only admire. She smiled at Joy. “Sorry. Her hubby has a new FIFO job in WA and she’s in a mess about it. I shouldn’t tell you that, but you’ll hear about it in church anyway. I expect I’ve got to do a records transfer request for you?”
Joy nodded. She suspected that the receptionist did half of what the doctor was supposed to do, in treating his patients: she listened to them. And did all the rest of her job, kept his patients sweet, and didn’t get paid his salary for it either. It might make more sense to set up a communication channel here, than in the Doctor’s room. Of course it could be awkward for the young woman, with confidentiality issues. “The only Jenkins I think I have met so far is rather elderly.”
“Her son. If you could sign here and here please.”
Joy did. “Ah yes. I noticed that the children become invisible when there are grandchildren around. She’s got quite a few.”
“Isn’t that true. They all go goo and gah over my Amber, and talk to her not me,” said the receptionist with a happy laugh. “But those are mostly old Joan’s daughters’ children. The son, Will, only has the one daughter. They’ve been away for the last couple of weeks. He’s been between jobs, and they went to stay with some cousin in the city to look for something. But now this has come up, so Jeannie Jenkins says they’re staying. You’ll meet her at your church, though Will won’t go.”
Still thinking that she was sure ‘Will won’t go’ had been a chorus for a pop song, Joy limped out to her car, and drove herself home. Fortunately it didn’t hurt to drive. There, she emptied out the medicine cabinet. Because she was a careful soul, who had worked in a Museum of Natural History, she carefully wrote down the names of the pills and ointments, and then dropped them into a carrier bag. Temptation was just to let it wait another day, to put her foot up and rest, but instead she went out to the car and drove to the pharmacy. It seemed quite wrong to drive such a short distance — in town she could have covered more distance walking between a car park and the shops — and country folk said that the townies were lazy, but it seemed everyone drove here. She’d seen several shoppers get into their vehicles at the IGA to drive sixty yards down the road, and park directly outside the establishment they were going into. Perhaps it was that they could park so easily that led to the habit. Today Joy was glad of it, as even with the little rail, the few steps up into the Pharmacy were uncomfortable.
It took her a while, and if she’d not found it an effort, she might have retreated again, because even through the glass door she could hear someone inside getting a loud peal rung over them — and fighting back. “…Like it’s not like I failed it!”
“At sixty-four percent you might as well have failed it! You’re never going to get into a decent university unless you pull up socks. You can do better, a lot better, and you’re going to have to, Cam. This is just not good enough, and you know it, or you wouldn’t have tried to hide it from me!”
“You just don’t even listen to me.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t avoid hearing your execrable taste in music! Now go and do some work on it. And don’t just sit there and doodle on the margins of your book for hours. Get in there and concentrate, son.”
“I don’t want to!”
A door at the back slammed as Joy pushed open the glass door, and the white-coated man at the back dispensing counter adjusted his expression from one of fury, still looking at the vibrating door next to him, to a faux welcome-to-a-customer expression. He recognized who, or rather what the customer was, and his expression shifted again. Joy recognized him too as the small sharp-faced man who had delighted in the discomfort of Zenobia… actually, probably not that so much, as in having a ring side seat in what he’d assumed would be a nasty fight, thought Joy, reassessing. The pharmacy was relatively small, with not all of the shelves full. To her mild amusement, there was a small book-display rack of field guides on the counter — and a copy of the book that had her wild flowers illustrations in it.
The ubiquitous assistants she was so used to in city pharmacies were nowhere to be seen. “Afternoon,” the man said, his voice carefully neutral. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you the pharmacist? Mr. er… Donald?” asked Joy. “I’m Joy Norton, Reverend Peter Hallam’s replacement. I’ve just emptied out his medicine cabinet and Dr. Hammond said this would be the right place to bring his medicines to.”
He looked a little taken aback, but then nodded. “Yes. I am the pharmacist, and yes we do handle the disposal of medication. My name is actually Donald van den Vaestermark, which no-one can spell or pronounce, so I tend to be called Donald.” He took the carrier bag and emptied it out onto the counter. “My. I didn’t realize what a lot of business I was depriving myself of. I didn’t see much of Hallam in here.”
“Oh. Is there another pharmacy I should rather have taken it to?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. There isn’t another in town. We just had words about his stupid sky fairies and he obviously decided to buy online instead.” He glanced at the bottles and ointments, picking up one and looking at it, and then at a second tube of ointment. “Still mostly corticosteroids, anti-allergenic stuff, by the looks of it.” He shoved it back in the bag. “I’ll dispose of it for you, Ms. Norton.”
As he did that, Joy glanced around the shop. And then her eyes caught, on an upper glass-fronted and locked cabinet behind the pharmacist, several bottles with a symbol she recognized, placed and, with shock realized where she’d last seen. The skull and crossbones used to mark poisons was not the same as the typical pirate flag… it was very stylized and always the same. And absolutely identical to the one drawn on the piece of paper that had disguised the brick thrown through her window.
The last time she’d seen this particular man, he had been having coffee with the local artist. And he was not a very large man, and dark haired. Had she just handed him the reason he’d been trying to break into the rectory? She couldn’t exactly snatch the bag back. And he was looking at her. An assessing, curious look. Not entirely pleasant.
She did her best to smile graciously, to camouflage her roil of emotions, and indeed her fear. “Thank you,” she said, praying that her voice would be steady. It was.
“Anything else I can do for you?” asked the Pharmacist.
“Perhaps if you have some arnica ointment. I fell and bruised my ankle.” It was a supreme effort at keeping a calm tone, and a level and relatively disinterested voice, quite out of synch with her racing heart.
He found some for her and rang it up. Joy was rather surprised at how much he charged, but said nothing. And although he pointedly referred to her as Ms. Norton, the town’s atheist and a possible murderer and burglar... gave her no reason to scream and run as fast as she could hobble. She left, and walked as calmly as she could down the few steps to the road.
As she got to the foot of the stair, she looked back and saw that he had emptied out the carrier bag again, and was carefully examining the contents.
She got into her car, wondering if she should drive straight to Sergeant Grogan. But what would she say to him? The Pharmacist has the same skull-and-crossbones on his bottles of poisons as on the note the brick had been wrapped in? The man was friendly with an artist? She might just have given him the very thing he had tried to break in for?
She turned out of the parking space and got a loud hoot from a passing ute that she had been too distracted to notice coming up behind. Thoroughly rattled, she drove home very carefully.
Tea, and few minutes of prayer, and then looking out of the window at the red sky of evening settling over the trees, leaving them black and silhouetted in its grandeur brought Matthew 16 to her mind… ‘When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red…’ thinking on the rest of that passage, she realized that she wasn’t even very good at interpreting the signs of weather in the sky out here, let alone the signs that might point to murder. She got up, had a twinge from her ankle, and collected the list of medications and her laptop, and set about looking them up.
It was a confusing occupation. And the irritating half-remembered tune playing in her head didn’t help. Still, none of the first seven medications gave a pharmacist any reason to need to recover the pills… unless he’d substituted them for something toxic? But so far they seemed to be treatments for arthritic pain, and allergies... Steroids, relatively cheap and not high-schedule drugs. Even the one that turned into an osteo-painkiller was nothing exceptional. He’d obviously been very allergic to something, because even she had recognised the epi-pen, but the rest had to be looked up. Some of them were homeopathic. The oddest was the anti-malarial treatment. But he might have gone to some tropical place, she supposed. And also it was used for some arthritic conditions, she saw, reading through the turgid medical terminology. She was quite glad when the ‘phone rang.
It was Mary. “I heard from Tom that you took a fall this morning. Do you need me to bring over a casserole?”
“If I said yes, it would be pure laziness. I have a slightly sore ankle. It won’t stop me cooking.”
Naturally, Mary Truman wanted all the details. Joy was not prepared to give all of them. Felixtown had enough speculation and gossip, and some instinct told her to not to mention her suspicions about the Pharmacist. So she turned the discussion to the other people she’d met at the Doctor’s rooms. She learned a fair bit about Kylie Clemens, and Dylan, and the fact that her older child had a different father. And of Major Ambleside-Smith. “Checking his blood pressure again. Honestly, why he or Penelope can’t do it at home? He had a minor heart problem a few years ago, but you’d think it was a triple bypass by the fuss she makes. It’s her fuss, but he likes it, or least puts up with it with good grace, and he doesn’t about anything he doesn’t like.”
It wasn’t very Christian, but it seemed probable that it was not an inaccurate assessment of the situation, Joy thought. But she still urged Mary toward charity on the subject. “At least she cares, and loves him. That has to be a good thing, Mary.”
Mary was not ready to let her opinions go on this subject. “If you ask me she does it just to bully Arthur into doing exactly what she tells him. But I suppose you’ll say that is uncharitable too.”
“We’re complex people, we all do things for complex reasons we don’t fully understand. And it is quite possible to be genuinely worried and to um, use that as a lever. Now, do you know anything about medications?”
“Not a thing. I’m usually very healthy, and find it hard to be sympathetic with people who quack themselves. Of course there are some really sick people. Why do you ask? Donald’s the person to ask about medicines. He’s very knowledgeable, much more than Dr Hammond — he actually has a Doctorate in Pharmacy. We’re very lucky to have him here.”
“I was just looking up Peter Hallam’s medications online, and then I was having to look up what the terms meant. I think I’ll just work on my message instead.”
“Take them into Donald. Pay no attention to his comments about ‘God-bothering’. He just does it to get a reaction. Poor Reverend Peter was fine with him until the day he snapped and they had a shouting match. It was the first time I saw him really angry, but you’re… so much more sensible. Now, about visiting your parishioners: there are quite a few who live out of town, some down roads your little car won’t do for. And not all of them are that easy to find. I could take some more time off…”
Joy had decided by now, well-meaning though Mary undoubtedly was, that those visits needed to be done without her, to give the parishioners a chance to get a word in, to express their own opinions and feelings. “I think I’ll put those ones off until my ankle feels better,” she said firmly. “I’ll look into getting myself out to those places then. I think it something that I need to do on my own, Mary. It’s very much a part of my mission here. Tomorrow I have the Danyards to see.”
Mary seemed to take that well enough. All she said was: “Take antacids!”
A few minutes later, just as she was wrestling with a difficult phrase for her message, and having that dratted tune pop into her head instead, the phone rang again. Perhaps that put an unintended bit of snap into her tone, when she said: “Joy Norton listening.”
“Ah. Well, it is Tom Truman speaking.”
“I’m fine, really.”
“I was pretty sure of that. The bush telegraph would have told me otherwise. But I actually called to apologize, and by the sounds of it I need to,” he said, sounding amused. “So no mallardy. I’m afraid I did tell Mary you’d stumbled on the stairs, and she’ll be bending your ear soon enough. I wouldn’t tell her about your midnight adventure if I were you.”
“She has called already, and I didn’t.”
“Oh. Sorry. Well, make sure you lock well. I would say a thread of fishing line across the window, attached to something would be more than adequate, if you must set death-traps. Much safer than across the stairs.”
“I was just tired and nervous. I don’t really believe it is possible to break in here quietly. Anyway, I think I know who it was, and I suspect I gave him the reason he was trying to break in. I am not sure I can do anything about it.”
“Oh. Well, tell me. Perhaps I can figure out what to do about it. And other than very rare slips when grilled by my sister, I am quite good at confidentiality.”
So she did.
There was silence when she’d finished. Then he said… “Hmm. Tell me, do you recall hearing any vehicles just after either incident?”
“The second one, definitely not. The first… let me think. I heard a heavy truck, but that was before they tried to climb in. It was early morning, in Felixtown.”
“Ah. That pretty well rules out Donald van den Vaestermark. He can’t fly even if he is a duck. He’s got a gammy hip, which would make running unlikely. And he couldn’t run home. He lives a couple of miles outside the town. You know, that rather run down hobby-farm you can see across the river on the way in from my place. And he drives a car with a very loud and recognizable noise to it. It’s an old e-type Jag, about all he salvaged from his marriage break-up. It’s not a noise that is easy to miss. A low-pitched deep ‘lub-dub’ sound. Go down to close to the shop around closing time, and you’ll hear him leave, and you’ll surely know if you’ve heard it before.”
She sighed. “And there I thought I had the ideal suspect.”
Tom Truman wasn’t slow on the uptake. “No, not ‘local atheist murders priest’. Anyway, I’d guess the town’s sympathies probably lie with Donald. He’s got a sharp tongue, but generally gives good advice. And the blow-up that Peter Hallam had with him was no help to the reputation of the church.”
“You said — and I think Isabella said, Peter Hallam had had a few fights. Everyone else seems to imply he was a plaster saint. Is this a case of not speaking ill of the dead?”
“I suppose so. He was a gentle and quietly spoken bloke most of the time, Reverend Joy. He just, well every now and again something would trigger him. He even had a go at Jeff Wiley once, over fly-tying. And Jeff is as inoffensive as a mouse. Well, a mouse that’s not breaking into your rectory, or eating my oats, and he’s master craftsman at his fly-tying too. He apologized to Jeff, and that was that. He’d apologized to a couple of folk to my knowledge, but there were a few people — Donald, and Zenobia that wouldn’t take it. Actually, if it came down to suspicion on the basis of overt dislike, I’d say Zenobia would be more likely. Except she’d have done him in with a block of tofu between the eyes or Odin’s Yew log or something exotic and completely unsubtle.”
