A Body in Seaview Grange by Dee MacDonald (jenna bush book club TXT) 📗

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at the moment,’ Sharon said, then added loudly, ‘Yes, that’ll be fine.’

Kate frowned. ‘What? You’re not making sense; is the person there?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ Sharon continued in the loud voice.

‘So you can’t speak now?’

‘Correct.’

‘Sharon, I’ll be up there as soon as I can. Get straight on to the police and text me the name of whoever it is. Stay safe.’

She heard the click then as Sharon ended her call.

Kate could hardly control her anxiety as she waited for news. But no text was forthcoming. She needed to get up there as quickly as possible and she sighed when she saw the next patient was old Sadie Thomson, famed for her gossip.

‘I hear they’ve bin carryin’ another body out from Seaview,’ she said.

‘No bodies have been carried out from Seaview,’ Kate said firmly as she studied Sadie’s rash. ‘Have you been eating seafood again?’

Sadie sniffed. ‘Our Bobby brought back a few muss—’

‘Mussels?’ Kate interrupted.

‘Yeah, just a few,’ Sadie admitted.

‘You know you’re allergic to seafood, Sadie, and that includes mussels. It’s always going to bring you out in spots. Anyway, put some antiseptic cream on that rash and it’ll disappear in a day or two.’

‘And they say that the second body belonged to that old vicar,’ Sadie went on, now completely disinterested in her rash. ‘But I expect they’d have sent for you and you’ll know all about it.’ She smiled hopefully at Kate.

Kate sighed. She needed to get out of here. Was this woman ever going to go? ‘The vicar had a bad turn,’ she explained patiently, ‘but he was allowed home after a night in hospital. Nothing to get excited about.’

‘And then there’s that foreign woman what got killed.’ Sadie was like a dog with a bone which she had no intention of giving up.

‘What about her?’ Kate asked, looking at her watch.

‘Well, it seems funny that it’s not so long ago since she was carried out on a stretcher, dead as a dodo.’

‘She was not dead,’ Kate said, ‘but she died in hospital later. Now, is there anything else I can help you with health-wise?’

‘I suppose I’d better be off,’ said Sadie without moving.

‘Yes,’ Kate agreed, ‘because I have a lot of patients waiting out there.’

‘All right, all right,’ Sadie grumbled as she grudgingly heaved herself off the chair. ‘Probably old Larry’s first in the queue. He’s always got somethin’ wrong with him, so he has. Too much beer’s his problem.’

As Kate ushered her out and consulted her patient list, she saw that it was indeed old Larry next. While she waited for him she checked her phone; no text message.

He hobbled in, collapsed onto the chair that Sadie had just vacated, and said, ‘I hear they tried to poison the old vicar up at Seaview. Was it you that phoned for the ambulance?’

Kate, now desperate, said, ‘Can you wait a little longer and see Sue? There’s somewhere I have to be urgently.’ She didn’t wait to hear his grumbles but rushed to Denise to ask her to reschedule her appointments because there was an emergency at Seaview Grange. Denise looked puzzled. ‘Nobody rang here,’ she said.

‘Take my word for it,’ Kate said as she rushed towards the door.

It was unbelievable. Kate blinked and blinked again. Once more there was an ambulance parked in front of the door of Seaview Grange, lights flashing. A couple of people stood round the gate, as well as the residents in the doorway, the women weeping openly.

Feeling sick in the pit of her stomach, Kate rushed in the door and pushed her way in. All she could see was Sharon lying at the foot of the stairs, her head against the stone step, Stan in tears beside her. Two paramedics were standing talking in low voices.

Ollie came forward. ‘I found her,’ he told Kate, ‘and she was a goner.’

‘What happened?’ Kate asked, feeling weak with shock as she bent over Sharon’s lifeless body. Stan was unable to speak.

‘We heard the thump while we were cooking our lunch, didn’t we, Ollie?’ Gloria said. ‘We thought maybe the postman had left a big package or somethin’ so we carried on with our recipe for a while before Ollie went out to investigate and there she was. You shouted, didn’t you, Ollie?’

‘When I came down to see what the commotion was about,’ said Cornelius Crow, ‘all I could see was the flex of the vacuum cleaner stretched across the top of the stairs, just like when Edina tripped.’ He hesitated and shuddered. ‘Then I looked down.’

‘She probably left the flex across the top of the stairs again, like she did before,’ said little Hetty, ‘and she must have tripped over it by accident.’

Stan, with tears streaming down his cheeks, said angrily, ‘Sharon wouldn’t have tied the flex across like that. Someone did it on purpose. Most likely whoever did it tied the flex across to make it “look” like an accident.’

Kate turned to the Pratts. ‘Did you hear her shout out?’ she asked.

‘No, we didn’t hear anythin’ except the bump, did we, Ollie?’ Gloria said.

Ollie nodded in agreement.

‘Then she could have been unconscious before she fell.’ Kate felt sick as she looked at the pool of blood beneath Sharon’s head and wondered if the injury might have been caused before the fall, by the fall or even after the fall.

There was a moment’s silence.

Then Kate said, ‘Has anyone rung the police? They should have been here by now. Have they not been yet?’

Everyone looked in her direction until one of the paramedics said, ‘I just did.’

‘Thank God,’ said Kate.

‘Why do the police have to be involved?’ asked Cornelius.

‘Because someone’s killed her, that’s why,’ Kate replied with feeling. ‘Someone here. And the police need to see Sharon before she’s moved.’

There was an appalled silence again.

Then the paramedic said, ‘We were here within ten minutes of getting the call, but she was dead when we arrived. Nothing we could