LIVERPOOL - The assisted dying cause got a boost yesterday when registered nurse Rowan Court had charges dropped against him by the Crown prosecutor of Liverpool in connection with his mother’s death.
Mr. Court has been living with the threat of criminal prosecution for the last three months since it was discovered that his terminally ill mother committed suicide by overdosing on painkillers that he supplied for her. Mr. Court admitted from the start that he knew what his mother intended to do with the pills. He said he had resisted her entreaties to buy the pills for her for a long time.
“As a nurse, I am trained to preserve life, not to extinguish it. I did everything I could to make my mother comfortable during her last days, but her suffering was too much for her to bear. In the end, I couldn’t say no to the only favor she had ever asked of me. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, but I don’t regret my actions. I would do it again if given the chance, even if it means going to jail. My mother would have bought the pills for herself if she were still mobile enough, but her life had become increasingly circumscribed by her disease.”
The late Mrs. Court’s doctor, James Bleeker confirmed Mr. Court’s version of events.
“We need to concentrate all our efforts on improving palliative care for terminally ill patients so that they do not have to make choices like these. It is hard to blame Mr. Court for what he did, even though it is against the law,” says Dr. Bleeker.
It is encouraging to see that the Crown prosecutor did not enforce the letter of the law in this case. Mr. Court is already suffering from grief at the loss of his mother and sorrow about the choice he made on her behalf. It would not be fair to inflict the stress of a criminal prosecution on him.
The tide of public opinion is changing. Now we need to change the law once and for all so that this situation does not arise again.
Fay read the blog carefully, making a note of the name of Mrs. Court’s treating doctor. A quick internet search informed her that he was a specialist physician treating nerve disorders such as multiple sclerosis and motor neuron disease in Warwick.
She phoned his rooms intending to leave a message with his receptionist requesting a conversation at a time that would be convenient to him.
The receptionist surprised her by putting her straight through.
“He has just started his lunch break and is still in his office. I’ll put you through to him now.”
Fortunately, Dr. Bleeker remembered the case well.
“I still get asked to comment on Mrs. Court’s death from time to time, especially by right-to-die activist groups. Is that who you represent, Miss Penrose?”
“Not at all. I’m investigating a death in the frail-care unit of a retirement estate. I’m looking into the backgrounds of everyone who had contact with the patient. Can you tell me what you can remember about Mrs. Court’s death? I believe she asked you for pain pills?”
“Yes, nerve disorders can be particularly difficult to treat. The body’s perception of pain is out of control. Mrs. Court was always wanting to increase her dosage of pain pills.”
“How did you respond to those requests?”
“I tried to be sympathetic, but by law we have to be very careful. We are not allowed to dispense large doses of strong opiates to patients who are suffering from terminal diseases. We could have our licenses taken away and even be criminally prosecuted if there is any hint that we dispensed such medications to a patient who might be contemplating self-harm. What we sometimes do is put the medication in the hands of the visiting nurses who make house calls to the patients.”
“Was there such a person in this case?”
“Mrs. Court was living with her son who was a registered nurse, so additional nursing care was not considered necessary. There was only a social worker who visited her once a week. I believe that was the person who found her body.”
“Were you surprised when you found out what had happened?”
“I was actually. I thought that Mrs. Court was coping well with her illness. Her mobility was restricted, but the disease wasn’t in a very advanced stage. She didn’t seem to be in distress, apart from asking for more pain medication. She once said that she didn’t feel like a useful member of society anymore, but I told her that wasn’t a healthy way of looking at herself.”
“But you did suspect that she might want the painkillers in order to harm herself?”
“Yes. In my line of work, it’s a possibility you have to bear in mind all the time.”
“Did you ever meet her son, Rowan?”
“Of course. He was the one who brought her to her appointments. He took good care of his mother. She was always clean, well fed, and in excellent physical condition considering her illness. I knew I could leave her nursing in his hands. I’m not surprised that he was the one she turned to when she couldn’t stand it anymore. They were very close.”
After lunch, Fay returned to her office to carry on her research.
There were two things she wanted to know about Meredith Disick. The first was whether her misreading of the prescription was a genuine error, and the second was whether there was any connection between her and the patient who had died as a result of being given the wrong dose of medication. This was not information that was available to the general public and Fay didn’t have the time to go all the way to Yorkshire to investigate the incident. Once again, she turned to the law enforcement software she still subscribed to.
The case against Meredith had got as far as the Crown prosecutor’s office, which meant the documents were still on record.
They were kept in a physical file, but each document had also been turned into a PDF and uploaded digitally. It was these that Fay used her software to request.
As far as the Crown prosecutor’s office was concerned, the request was being made by a law enforcement officer. This gave Fay a slight twinge of conscience because she had no right to call herself an officer anymore. But it was all in a good cause and there really was no other way she could access the documents.
It took nearly an hour of careful searching before she found what she was looking for – a digital copy of the original prescription that Meredith had misread.
Looking at it, Fay could only wonder why mistakes like that didn’t happen more often. Many doctors had terrible handwriting. How the poor nurses or pharmacists were supposed to interpret it was beyond her.
She did a quick internet to determine how the older generation of Germans wrote the numeral one. It was a light curved or diagonal upstroke followed by a hard, straight downstroke.
The number she was looking at now matched that pattern. Then the doctor had taken his fountain pen and underlined the number with a thick stroke that joined the two arms together so that the number now looked like a four.
Fay looked at it again.
It certainly didn’t look anything like a one. She supposed that it did look rather like a wonky four. If she had been the nurse, she would probably have queried it simply because it was such a peculiar looking number. Then she remembered Meredith saying that everyone in the hospital had looked up to the surgeon as a kind of demigod – and a short-tempered one at that. It was easy to imagine a nurse’s reluctance to bother him by querying his prescription. The number looked more like a four than anything else. It made sense that the Crown prosecutor had decided to drop the case.
Fay printed herself a copy of the prescription before beginning her search into the backgrounds of Meredith and the patient. Before she could get started, her phone rang. It was a Norfolk number.
“Hello. It’s Lindsay here from Noah’s Ark returning your call.”
“Thanks for getting back to me. It’s Fay Penrose from Bluebell Island. I wanted to ask how Leo the lion is settling into his new home.”
There was silence on the line.
“Hello …?” Fay said eventually.
“There’s obviously been a misunderstanding. The animal control people told us that Leo’s owner had change
d her mind about sending him to us and was going to make other arrangements for him. She was a very grand old lady, apparently. He said she scared him half to death with her aristocratic manner.”
Fay’s heart sank into her boots. “Did he say what other arrangements she was making for the lion?”
“No. He thought she meant that she had found another sanctuary for the lion to go to. We were disappointed. We had been looking forward to his arrival. Our female lion Laurel is still alone. She is pining for her late companion, Hardy. Leo would have been the perfect solution.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” said Fay. “But don’t give up on Leo just yet. I don’t know what Lady Chadwick’s alternative arrangements were, but they might not be permanent. Leo might still be coming your way any day now.”
Sooner rather than later, if Fay had anything to do with it.
The moment she ended the call, she was already dialing David. She had no hesitation in asking him to do this favor for her. He was still officially on leave and besides, that was what they did. When the chips were down, they called on each other, never doubting that the response would be positive and unhesitating. Just as David had known that Fay would drop everything and come immediately when his father was ill, she never doubted that he would help her now.
He answered the phone quickly and listened as she explained the situation.
The trouble with Lady Chadwick was that she tended to take male authority figures more seriously than women. David suited her idea of the authoritative male. She was way more likely to listen to him than she was to Fay.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “If by some miracle Lady Chadwick really did make alternative arrangements for her lion at a different sanctuary, then that’s fine. I wanted him to go to Noah’s Ark because they’re the best, but he’s not my lion. But if, as I suspect, she has made another attempt to keep him for herself, then the whole island is in danger. This time when we call animal control, they must report back to us, not to Lady Chadwick.”
“Got it,” said David. It sounded as though he were putting on his jacket. “What was it that tipped you off? The ripped-up garbage all over the island? It certainly got me thinking.”
“Yes, exactly. And now we need to sort this out before the lion starts mauling something more than garbage bags.”
Chapter 25
It was difficult to focus after that.
Just knowing that Leo might be out there sizing up a juicy schoolkid for his next meal was enough to ruin Fay’s concentration. All this time she had been picturing the lion settling into his new habitat, and meeting his new girlfriend, Laurel. She had certainly never dreamed that the problem of Lady Chadwick’s lion would come back to haunt her.
Forcing herself to focus, she read up about Meredith Disick and Andy Benn, the boy who had died as a result of the misread prescription. At the time of Andy’s car accident, he had been eighteen years old. He had grown up in Leeds, a city not far from York where Meredith lived and worked. A newly licensed driver, he had been on his way to York for a party when he had driven into the back of a slow-moving truck on the motorway. He had sustained a head injury and been taken by ambulance immediately to the hospital where Meredith was on duty.
His condition meant that it was already touch and go whether he would make it or not. The surgeon was ready to operate to relieve pressure on his brain, but first ordered him to be given medication to reduce the brain swelling as much as possible. It was that medication that had been given at four times the recommended dose. The boy had died after a seizure an hour later.
As hard as Fay tried, she couldn’t find a connection between him and the forty-eight-year-old Meredith whose error had caused his death. He wasn’t her long-lost son. They weren’t related in any way. Meredith and her husband described themselves as childless by choice. There was no indication that they had ever met or even interacted online. His family and her family had no mutual acquaintances. All the indications were that they had been strangers to each other at the moment she had introduced the wrong quantity of medication into his drip.
Fay’s phone buzzed. It was a text from David.
David Dyer: There’s no answer at Chadwick Manor. Lady Chadwick is either somewhere in the village or she has gone to Truro to do her shopping. I can’t raise her cook or gardener either. I can see where she was keeping the lion until a few days ago, but there’s no sign that he has been there recently. Still, the grounds are huge. She could have been keeping him anywhere. I’m going to ask around the village. Nella Harcourt might know where she is and what she did with her lion.
Fay rolled her shoulders to release the tension in them. They were no closer to knowing the truth. Leo could be safely in another sanctuary or he could be hiding in the bushes somewhere. She didn’t have enough evidence at this stage to justify scaring the whole island again and instituting another curfew. She would have to wait and see what David found out.
Unable to sit still any longer, she jumped up and grabbed her purse. It was time to ask the CEO of Argyle Holdings what he had to say for himself.
The receptionist at Argyle Holdings tried to block her, but Fay insisted that it was urgent. She was shown into Ashcroft Argyle’s office, where he looked less than delighted to see her.
“We had a long conversation a couple of days ago, Miss Penrose. I thought I answered all your questions then.”
“New information has come to light since then,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re aware that there have been several patients who have changed their wills in favor of your candy-striper volunteer, Penny Sweet? You must see how that raises questions when patients start dying in mysterious circumstances.”
She expected him to launch into an angry denial, but instead he nodded.
“That is something we are aware of. We’re adding a new clause to our owner’s agreement saying that it is against our policy for residents to make bequests in favor of any of our staff members, including volunteers. We will explain that it can lead to a breakdown of the professional nature of the relationship.”
“The problem is that it has already happened. At least three patients have changed their wills in Penny Sweet’s favor.”
Ashcroft looked puzzled. “I can see how that’s not a good idea generally, but surely in this case there’s no harm done? I hardly think that the RSPCA is going to be killing patients off for donations.”
“The RSPCA?”
“That’s who Penny gave the bequests to as soon as the money was released to her.”
“She donated the money that was left to her to an animal charity?”
“Yes, didn’t you know? She’s a part-owner of Sweet’s Candy Store. They have a thriving online shop as well as the physical storefront in the High Street. She doesn’t need money. She saw it as a bonus, so she decided to donate it instead of keeping it.”
“Then my last question to you is about your policy of having the residents pay for their units in fixed instalments. Then when they die you can resell those units at a higher price. The property market is booming on Bluebell Island. You will do well financially out of the four recent deaths of your residents. Two of them in particular owned prime cottages.”
He shifted in his seat. “I admit that’s a tricky issue. The residents like the idea of fixed instalments because most of them are living on a fixed income and can’t afford to have the cost of their accommodation going up each year. But it does give us the appearance of having a financial incentive to have a high turnover of residents.”
“Yes, it does. The residents have been talking about the profit you’re going to make on reselling those units.”
“That’s unfortunate. All I can say is that there is nothing worse for our business than having residents pass away in unusual numbers. The people who buy life rights to property here want to believe that they will be spending a long and happy retirement on our estate. They want to know that we will look after them in sickness and in health. The recent deaths have been a pub
lic relations nightmare for us. An alarming number of people have taken themselves off the waiting list. We’ll be dealing with the fall-out for years. The amount of money we get from reselling the units that become vacant won’t even nearly make up for it.”
“Is that true?” asked Fay.
“It absolutely is. Normally, by now, we would already have sold those four vacant units. Instead, they are all standing empty.”
“Interesting.”
“It has been an unmitigated disaster for us, from start to finish. I hope I’ve managed to convince you of that, if nothing else.”
She stood up to go. “As a matter of fact, you have. Thank you for your time, Mr. Argyle.”
Fay was more sure than ever that she knew who had added adrenalin to the patients’ drips in the small hours of the morning, causing violent tachycardia and eventual cardiac arrest for four elderly people. The problem was that she had no proof. The person had opportunity only, and a motive that she could only guess at. She would need to catch her suspect in the act.
That would mean assembling the same team that had been working in the frail-care unit on the nights that the patients died. She thought for a moment, weighing her options. Yes, it could be done, but it would take all her powers of persuasion to assemble the right people. Her attention to detail would have to be impeccable and she would be forced to trust someone she had not entirely clicked with.
But first she would have to check that her main actor was ready for a starring role. Fay slid her phone out of her pocket and began to text.
Fay: What are you doing tonight? Do you feel like helping me catch a very bad person?
From her vantage point in Matron Sale’s office, Fay could see everything she needed to in the frail-care unit. Only the wards were out of her sight. The private security guards Mrs. Sale had hired were still in place. Fay would have to trust them to do their job of protecting the patients. She had other fish to fry.
The Cat That Was Bigger Than You Page 15