The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

‘Caaake,’ Irma corrected her. ‘Caaake and pea soup is what it is. Will you have some red wine?’

  Siiri reminded her that it was only nine o’clock in the morning, but Irma didn’t believe her, and poured herself a full glass.

  ‘How could you get post if it’s only nine in the morning?’

  Siiri had to explain the whole thing again: the package didn’t even have any stamps on it. It hadn’t come through the post.

  ‘Right,’ Irma said, taking a great gulp of wine. ‘Wine and caaake, sure is good. Trust me, that package is from Margit’s husband. What’s in it? Why don’t you open it? Maybe there’s underwear in it.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Siiri puffed, and pointed out that Irma had just told her not to open it. Irma wasn’t having a very good morning. Siiri decided to take the box down to the main office, because it was without doubt a suspicious package.

  ‘I just finessed it!’ Irma said in the middle of a slurp of her pea soup. Then she grimaced – red wine and pea soup from a silver spoon didn’t really go well together. ‘It’s from Erkki Hiukkanen. He’s apologizing for surprising me without my clothes on the other morning. I don’t dare to sleep in the nude any more, even though I think it’s wonderful. Do you know I wear a pair of silk pyjamas to bed now because of him?’

  ‘But Irma, the package was on my postbox,’ Siiri said, beginning to feel the conversation was hopeless.

  Irma started to wonder whether Erkki could have got their postboxes mixed up, and whether it was late enough in the day for her to have the whisky her doctor had prescribed, because the wine tasted terrible. Maybe it had gone off. She must not be drinking enough red wine, since her large box of wine was spoiling before she could finish drinking it.

  ‘I should tell the off-licence that they ought to make smaller boxes, for one person. The boxes are lighter to carry than bottles – even I can carry one all the way home from the store quite easily.’

  Siiri left, taking the mysterious package with her to show the people in the office downstairs, and in the lift noticed that she was still wearing her nightgown. Irma had muddled her head. Or the package had. All of it. She went back up to her apartment, got dressed, and got ready to leave again. It all went very slowly, but she had plenty of time, always nothing but time. That was something you could buy nowadays. Her grandson’s daughter’s boyfriend had bought time for her on her tram card, so she never had to pay a fare. She looked for her cane but couldn’t find it. Oh well, she could manage all right without it. She did remember to bring the package with her, just as she was about to close the door.

  It was already lively downstairs. The Ambassador was playing cards with the Partanens, and even though Siiri didn’t believe a word Irma had said, she did feel a bit uncomfortable in the Partanens’ presence.

  ‘What’s the package?’ the Ambassador asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Siiri said, and looked at Margit Partanen’s husband to see how he reacted. He didn’t. He looked like he’d never seen Siiri before.

  ‘Eino Partanen, agronomist,’ he said, standing and extending his hand.

  Actually, they’d never been officially introduced. New residents at Sunset Grove just gradually slipped in among the rest, and there were a lot of people there whom she knew nothing about. So maybe Margit’s husband wasn’t as confused as he seemed. Siiri introduced herself, without mentioning her former profession, but before they could shake hands Margit tugged her husband back into his chair and told him to be quiet.

  ‘Why don’t you open it?’ the Ambassador asked, and Siiri explained that she was returning it. The Ambassador started to talk about all the packages he’d had to open in his exciting diplomatic career during the Cold-War years in the communist countries, but no one was listening. Margit was scolding her husband, who was trembling. Siiri wished them a good day and went to Director Sundström’s office, where the candle was flickering again, apparently to give the place some atmosphere.

  ‘Well, isn’t this a surprise,’ Sinikka Sundström said happily, and asked Siiri to sit down. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I got a package,’ Siiri said. She thought it best to get straight to the point. There was no sense in burdening the director any more than was necessary. She already looked like she ‘d cried all night; her hair was mussed, her eyes were red. Siiri felt sorry for her. ‘I think it was left by mistake. There’s no name on it, not mine or the sender’s. I thought you might find out what it is and who it belongs to.’

  Sinikka Sundström looked at the package in horror. She didn’t dare even touch it. She probably thought it was a bomb. Siiri turned the package over in her hands and smiled so the director would understand that there was no assassination attempt going on. She hoped it would help.

  ‘Should I take it to someone else? Perhaps to Pertti Sundström in Quality Control? Or is this Erkki Hiukkanen’s job?’

  A look of relief spread over Director Sundström’s face. She grabbed the phone and asked Virpi Hiukkanen to come to her office. A moment later the head nurse was standing in front of the file shelf with gum in her mouth, not saying a word. Siiri suspected she was a former smoker. There was no other reason for a grown person to be constantly chewing gum the way she did.

  ‘Could you help our dear Siiri? She has a package that there’s some confusion about,’ Sundström said, shooing Siiri and Virpi out of the room and patting them both on the shoulder to calm herself down.

  ‘Have a good day! Bye-bye now!’

  Virpi Hiukkanen didn’t even look at Siiri, she just strode swiftly to her own office. Siiri ran after her. When she’d got inside, Virpi slammed the door, put her gum in a cup on the desk, and snatched the package from her.

  ‘Where did you get this? Why did you bring this to Director Sundström? Just what are you insinuating?’

  Then she took a breath, flipped her thin hair, and tried to begin again, more calmly. ‘One of the founding principles of Sunset Grove is safety, and respect for privacy,’ she said, as if listing these principles was a mantra for tranquillity. But the mantra didn’t work. In a moment she was worked up again, unable even to sit down. She stalked back and forth, shouting so loudly that the deafest and most demented residents couldn’t fail to hear her.

  ‘Who brought you this package? Who was it, and when? Did you open it? It’s no use trying to look like you don’t know anything. Don’t think I don’t know you. You’re going to tell me everything you know about this package. Everything! Tell me who you got it from! Or did you put it there yourself? Where did you put it?’

  It would have been good to have Irma there. Only Irma could have stood up to Virpi Hiukkanen’s blind fury. Siiri started to ponder how Irma would have said that they provided more privation than privacy, but then she felt weak and her eyes grew dim.

  ‘Can you help me?’ she said, leaning against the desk, but Virpi didn’t stop.

  ‘Don’t play invalid. Who gave you this package? Tell me the truth!’

  ‘I feel dizzy,’ Siiri managed to say, before falling to the floor. There was a loud thud. Siiri was a smallish woman, but on her way down she pulled a chair and part of a pile of papers with her.

  When Siiri came to there was no one else in the head nurse’s office. She had no idea how long she’d been lying on the floor with her sweater up around her ears. She was embarrassed and tried to get up, but she couldn’t manage it the way she usually could. She had to wait a moment. She moved her eyes around. They seemed to be working normally. It was completely silent except that she could hear a hiss and hum in her head, but that was normal at her age. She wiggled her feet warily. They both moved, and felt like they were in one piece. She lifted her arms. Her right arm hurt a little, and so did her side. She was just about to sit up when Virpi Hiukkanen’s phone rang. Virpi rushed in to answer it.

  ‘Are you still here?’ Virpi said, stepping over her. The phone call was brief. Virpi just said, ‘I have it. I’ll call you back.’

  Then she hung up and stepped over Siiri again, so that Sii
ri could see her black slip under her skirt. She marvelled that anyone still wore slips nowadays. They were so impractical.

  ‘Can someone come and help me?’ Siiri called to the hallway, and a young resident nurse came in and seemed not to wonder at all why Siiri Kettunen was lying on the floor in the head nurse’s office. She helped Siiri up without a word, fumbling awkwardly, and took her by the elbow to the lift. Siiri couldn’t believe that a nurse wouldn’t know how to lead someone gently, without hurting them. What were they teaching them in nursing school?

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m a little scared,’ the girl said. ‘I’ve never met any old people before. We practised on dolls.’

  ‘Don’t you have a grandmother?’ Siiri asked in astonishment, pulling herself out of the girl’s vice grip.

  ‘My grandma’s sixty-seven. Not terribly old.’

  ‘Unlike me! You could be my great-grandchild. Shall I adopt you?’

  Now the girl laughed. Siiri suggested that she always offer her arm to someone she was helping somewhere, and not grab them. Then they walked side by side to the lift and Siiri said she would be all right the rest of the way on her own, because she did feel quite strong compared to the timid girl.

  ‘What happened to you?’ the girl asked nervously.

  ‘I think I had an attack of arrhythmia,’ Siiri said, but the girl didn’t believe her because she thought arrhythmia was a life-threatening condition, and Siiri was fine.

  ‘You just had a fainting spell. These things happen at your age. That’s what they told us. It’s quite normal. Remember to drink plenty of water every day.’

  The lift had arrived. The frail child-nurse gave her a sprightly wave and walked away with such speed that her ponytail bounced perkily from side to side. Siiri liked her. She would be a good nurse one day.

  Siiri stood alone in the lift and thought about all the things in her life that had been normal: growing pains when she was young, menstrual cramps, the fear of pregnancy and giving birth, the tiredness of middle age, the listlessness, sleeplessness, headaches, the aches and pains of old age, the twinges, the stiffness, the hum in her head and buzzing in her ears, and now this arrhythmia. But not death. She started to feel weak again. Her head throbbed. She leaned against the lift wall and held on to the rail with both hands. She looked in the mirror at a shockingly pale old woman – herself.

  ‘Döden, döden, döden,’ she said to the monster in the mirror, and walked slowly to her apartment. At the door she realized she’d left the mysterious package in the head nurse’s office, and decided that was where it really belonged.

  ‘How lovely to have no responsibilities and to be able to take a catnap whenever you like,’ she said out loud to herself as she settled on the bed, sighed, and closed her eyes. This is how she would look when she died, hopefully. Happy are they who die in their sleep.

  Chapter 13

  ‘What package?’ Irma said, sitting at dinner in Siiri’s apartment. Siiri had warmed up some blood pancakes – another item that was often on sale at Low Price Market. A pack of blood pancakes was a lot of food for two people, and they were delicious with lingonberry jam.

  Irma had also had a nap, which was good because as she had been drinking whisky and red wine since her morning coffee there was no telling what state she’d be in otherwise. As it was she didn’t remember what had happened that very morning. Siiri explained it all again. When she got to the part about Virpi Hiukkanen and the attack of arrhythmia, Irma got very angry. She thought that it was downright shameful that there were people working in a retirement home who didn’t have the least bit of interest in the well-being of others.

  ‘It’s against the law to leave an old woman who’s fainted lying on the floor!’ she said, her voice so high that it sounded like she was singing. ‘Telling you there’s nothing to worry about!’

  ‘I doubt there’s a law about it,’ Siiri said, trying to calm her, but she wouldn’t be calmed.

  ‘There must be some law to promote the safety of the elderly. After all, there are laws about letting your pigs out. I read in the paper that you have to let your pigs go outside every day now, and if they’re not used to it their feet get messed up from the constant outings. I thought it was quite funny.’ She laughed happily, then blew her nose in her lace handkerchief and thought for a moment. ‘If they could train old people to find truffles, it would kill two birds with one stone. Two houseflies with one swat. By which I mean flouse-lies. The old people and the pigs could go out in the woods together – and they would find truffles, too. That’s three flouse-lies! I’ve heard that nowadays people can’t tell a chanterelle from an agaric. Is a truffle a mushroom?’

  Siiri didn’t know, so Irma continued mumbling. She and her husband had once bought truffles in Prague. They were sold by weight, and the vendor shaved off tiny slices onto a postal scale. She sighed, missing her husband for a moment, then roused herself when she remembered what they’d been talking about.

  ‘We have to file a complaint against Virpi Hiukkanen. I’m going to do it right now. Do you have a pen and paper?’

  Before Siiri could answer, Irma was rummaging through Siiri’s kitchen drawers. She found some old photographs.

  ‘Who’s this beautiful woman?’ Irma asked, looking at a picture of Siiri in her Women’s Auxiliary uniform.

  Siiri got her a pen and paper and wondered where a person could possibly send such a complaint.

  ‘There has to be some place,’ Irma said decisively, and announced that she was going to write to the retirement home’s board of directors. ‘There must be a board of directors. I can’t imagine that Director Sundström’s husband is in charge of the whole thing.’

  She sat down at the table to write, now and then asking Siiri a question she couldn’t answer.

  ‘How long were you unconscious? Did Virpi blame the package on you? Did you ask for help before you passed out? Has your arrhythmia been diagnosed?’

  In the end the complaint was very no-nonsense. Siiri was proud of Irma, and grateful, because Irma was right, after all, that they shouldn’t treat a sick person that way in a retirement home. Or anywhere, really.

  ‘If a woman was lying unconscious on the pavement, would you just step over her?’ Irma asked, looking Siiri in the eye with the heat of righteous indignation.

  They were certain that the governing body of Sunset Grove would intervene in matters such as this. They found the Sunset Grove information pack in its blue folder on Siiri’s bookshelf, the one that was sent to everyone in the facility. It said that Sunset Grove was owned by the Loving Care Foundation, which was governed by a board made up of four people they’d never heard of, and Virpi Hiukkanen.

  ‘How can she be her own boss?’ Irma said with puzzlement.

  They decided to write four letters of complaint and send them to each of the other members of the board individually. Siiri still had stamps and envelopes from last year’s Christmas cards.

  ‘Christmas stamps? Are you sure these will work?’ Irma said, but the stamps were marked first class, so they must be acceptable, even if they did have elves on them. It was quite a lot of work writing the same letter three more times, but Siiri made some instant coffee and got the red wine out of the cleaning cupboard, and Irma was able to carry on.

  ‘Elderly person left unaided,’ was the title of the complaint. It told what had happened, and when and where, and finished by demanding prompt resolution of the matter and an apology at the very least. Siiri wasn’t sure about the apology, because the idea of Virpi Hiukkanen coming to her and asking forgiveness was repellent to her. Virpi wouldn’t be sincerely sorry, and besides, she might hug her to show her regret. That would be even more horrible than Sinikka Sundström’s constant hugging, because Virpi was a hard, bony woman. It seemed strange to hug all the time instead of shaking hands. Even Siiri’s son, the one who died from obesity, was always hugging everybody, even though he could hardly get his arms around his own belly. And he had been such a sweet baby! Siiri could never
forget how he sat up in his white pram, smiling, always smiling. Even when he did cry occasionally, he never yelled. The big tears would just roll down his cheeks, but he would be quiet, and look like an angel.

  ‘I believe in forgiving. The new testament is much better than the old one,’ Irma said, but she dropped the subject because she knew that Siiri wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. Then they went straight out to post the letters. Irma suggested, to Siiri’s great surprise, that they should take a tram into the city.

  ‘You can’t leave letters like this in the retirement home postbox. Virpi might take them and read them. I don’t trust that woman at all, or her husband.’

  In the post office by the railway station they couldn’t find the box to put the letters in, although they found all kinds of other useless things, like elf dolls, coffee cups, aprons and key rings.

  ‘Can you drop a letter off here, like you could at the post office in the old days?’ Irma asked a cashier sitting behind a display of chocolate bars and reflector tags.

  ‘Certainly, you can drop them off right here,’ was the answer.

  They left the four letters with the young cashier, looked around a little, and argued over whether or not this was still the main post office. Was it possible that the same architect built the post office and the Olympic Swimming Stadium? Was the main post office any faster than the other branches, and was a main post office even necessary at all? Why in the world didn’t they move the main post office to Pasila, since the main library was there now? Then they noticed that there was a library in the post office, and went in to read the newspapers. But there was nothing interesting in the newspapers, just politicians so young they seemed like mere children throwing tantrums, interviews with celebrities they’d never heard of. There were also several letters to the editor about poor care for the elderly. So Siiri talked Irma into taking another tram journey, on the number 6. But of course first they had to travel for one stop on the number 10, which Irma didn’t like the smell of.