The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove
Read The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Online
Authors: Minna Lindgren
Prologue
‘Is that a new blouse?’ Irma asked, fiddling with the fabric of Siiri’s old shirt. ‘It’s a pretty lavender. I once had a sofa this
colour.’
‘Is it lavender? I thought it was violet,’ Siiri said, and only then did she notice the lovely shawl that Anna-Liisa was wearing. ‘Your throw is violet too, isn’t
it?’
‘Well,’ Anna-Liisa said, straightening the scarf and looking as if she were about to begin a long lecture on colour definitions. But all she said was that she felt her wrap was more
of a pale shade of purple. ‘Irma’s dress, on the other hand, might be called lavender, if there even is such a colour.’
‘You are such a ninny, Anna-Liisa. This dress is blue. Or is it? Maybe it does tend more towards purple. Did you notice how all of us happen to be wearing something this colour
today?’
They laughed at the coincidence, and soon none of them could remember whose turn it was to start the next hand of cards. It hardly mattered, though, since they had been playing the same game for
much too long already. Irma let out a deep sigh and Siiri took her lace handkerchief out of her handbag and wiped her eyes. For a moment it was terribly quiet, until Anna-Liisa started to drum her
fingers on the cloth-covered card table. But that didn’t do much to lighten the mood. Life at Sunset Grove was certainly dull, if their only bright moment was when they noticed that they were
all wearing the same colour, and they all called it by a different name.
‘I’ve finessed it!’ Irma suddenly crowed, her voice so high and loud that Siiri jumped. ‘Listen, you know how there are all sorts of things happening here at Sunset
Grove? We could start snooping around, do some meddling.’
‘What exactly do you feel is happening?’ Anna-Liisa asked, but Irma was undaunted.
‘We’ll start a detective agency. I think that’s what I’m thinking.’
‘So you reckon you’re Miss Marple? Lord above, you are childish,’ Anna-Liisa said, and fumbled for her Zimmer frame to indicate that she’d had quite enough nonsense for
one day.
‘It might be fun,’ Siiri said helpfully. ‘We certainly could use a little play in our lives.’
‘Exactly! There’s no harm in having some fun. And I already know what the name should be: The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency.’
Irma pronounced this ceremoniously, her voice trembling as if it were a stroke of genius. Siiri laughed approvingly, but Anna-Liisa didn’t say anything. She headed towards the cafeteria,
shoving her Zimmer frame so forcefully that her purple shawl swung from side to side.
Every morning Siiri Kettunen woke up and realized that she wasn’t dead yet. Then she got out of bed, washed, dressed and ate something for breakfast. It took her a while,
but she had the time. She read the newspaper diligently and listened to the morning radio shows. It made her feel like she belonged in this world. She often went for a ride on the tram around
eleven o’clock, but she didn’t feel like it today.
The bright institutional lighting gave the common room of Sunset Grove retirement home the atmosphere of a dentist’s waiting room. Several residents dozed on the sofas, waiting for lunch.
In the corner Anna-Liisa, Irma and the Ambassador were playing rummy at the cloth-covered card table. The Ambassador was absorbed in his own cards, Anna-Liisa was keeping up a running commentary on
the other players’ hands, and Irma was looking impatient at the slow progress of the game. Then she saw Siiri and her eyes brightened.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ she crowed in a high falsetto, waving with a broad sweep of her arm like a train conductor. Irma Lännenleimu had taken singing lessons in her youth and had
once sung the Cherubino aria to piano accompaniment at the conservatory matinee, and since student performances were reviewed back then, a newspaper music critic had praised her voice as supple and
resonant. This crowing call was Irma and Siiri’s customary greeting. It always worked, even in the middle of a noisy conversation or on a busy street.
‘Guess what?’ Irma said, before Siiri had even sat down at the table. ‘The Hat Lady in C wing isn’t dead after all. And we’d practically finished grieving for
her!’ She laughed until her plump body jiggled and her voice rang even higher. Irma always wore a dress, preferably dark in colour, and even on ordinary days wore earrings with many-faceted
stones, a string of pearls around her neck and two gold bracelets on her left wrist. When she spoke, her exuberant gestures made the bracelets jangle pleasantly.
Last week the flag at Sunset Grove had been flown at half mast, and since they hadn’t seen the Hat Lady for several days, they’d thought she had died. But yesterday she had
reappeared, wearing her broad-brimmed turquoise hat and playing bingo like she always did. She’d just been out getting a spare part for her heart, and in the process had nearly died of a
cardiac infarction.
‘She says she may live for ten more years, poor thing,’ Irma said.
Siiri laughed, her grey eyes twinkling. Irma made the woman’s medical recovery sound like an extended sentence, which, of course, it was.
‘It wasn’t a spare part for her heart, strictly speaking,’ Anna-Liisa said in that no-nonsense way she had of correcting any errors or discrepancies of meaning. It was an
obsession with her. Siiri and Irma thought it was due to the fact that Anna-Liisa had once been a Finnish language and literature teacher.
‘I got a red three!’ the Ambassador shouted but that didn’t stop Anna-Liisa.
‘Angioplasty is the vernacular, the most commonly used term for it. They use a thing called a stent, a sort of mesh tube, to hold the artery open.’
Anna-Liisa was a tall woman with a deep, full-throated voice. She knew everything you could possibly know about angioplasty, replacement parts, local anaesthetic and arthroscopic surgery, but
they never paid any attention to her explanations. Having worked as a teacher, however, Anna-Liisa was used to not being listened to.
‘It’s sheer lunacy to get spare parts at the age of ninety,’ Siiri said. Everyone else agreed.
‘Do you think you’ll live to be a hundred, girls?’ the Ambassador asked, laying his cards down on the table and straightening his tie. He always dressed correctly, as befitted
a former diplomat, in a smart shirt, tie, brown smoking jacket and straight-legged trousers, which was nice, since many of the men at Sunset Grove shambled around in ugly tracksuits. On important
days and Sundays the Ambassador wore a tidy suit with an oak-leaf veteran’s insignia on the lapel.
‘It’s not as if it matters what we think,’ Siiri said, because that’s what she thought. ‘I wouldn’t want to be that old, though.’
‘If it wasn’t the Hat Lady who died last week, I wonder who it was,’ Irma said. She was very curious and always on the lookout for gossip at Sunset Grove. Her information on
this event had been proved wrong, and so, understandably, she was a little upset about it.
‘It was that boy, the cook. Tero, I think his name was,’ Anna-Liisa said, laying down three sevens.
Siiri’s head buzzed and her throat felt dry. She stared at Anna-Liisa. She couldn’t believe that Tero could be dead. Irma, on the other hand, looked delighted at the news because she
remembered that she had heard about it before, and then promptly forgotten about it.
‘That’s right! You really liked Tero, didn’t you, Siiri? Was his name Tero? Have you noticed how young men nowadays all have two-syllable names: Tero, Pasi, Vesa,
Tomi
?
Imagine my not telling you about it right away. I heard about it yesterday from the masseuse, but after all her pummelling I was so worn out that I just had a whisky and went to bed.
My doctor has prescribed whisky for my . . . my everything. Look, I’ve got two sevens for you, Anna-Liisa!’
Suddenly Siiri felt sad. She missed Tero so much that her stomach hurt. How was it possible that such a healthy young man could die while ninety-four-year-olds never seemed to? Siiri had read in
the paper that once you lived to be ninety you stopped ageing. How horrible. That meant that over-aged people like her were late for their death. First everybody died – friends, spouses
– then nobody did. Two of Siiri’s children were already dead: her eldest son from too much alcohol and her youngest from too much food. He’d been the baby of the family – a
handsome, athletic boy when he was young. But then he ate himself to such a girth, doing nothing outside work, driving everywhere he went, eating pizza and crisps and smoking cigarettes. It was
called affluenza – when a person reaches such a high standard of living that they die from it at the age of sixty-five.
But Tero, the cook at Sunset Grove, was thirty-five if he was a day, and he hadn’t looked sick at all. On the contrary, he’d been glowing with good health, the way only a healthy
young man can. Broad shoulders, strong hands, good colour in his face – that was the kind of person he was. And when he smiled he had dimples in both cheeks.
Their friendship had begun over the mashed potatoes. The Sunset Grove cafeteria served mashed potatoes altogether too often. They never offered rice. They thought that old people didn’t
have any teeth and mashed potatoes would go down easily, like baby food. None of the food was ever salted, and unminced meat was something they could only dream of. Siiri didn’t like mashed
potatoes, so Tero kindly arranged to have some other side dish for her under the counter, some carrots or beetroot or something. After lunch he would come over to her table for a cup of coffee and
when Siiri asked if he had a girlfriend he said that he didn’t need one because he had her. They had a way of flirting like that – and it was fun. A kind of harmless, happy chatter,
which there wasn’t much of at Sunset Grove.
The card game seemed to be over. The Ambassador asked Irma how old she was. No one except Siiri really seemed to care about the young cook’s death.
‘Ninety-two?’ the Ambassador marvelled. ‘So you don’t have a driver’s licence any more? You’re welcome to my taxis, Irma, dear. I have so many taxi coupons
that I would have to ride around in a taxi all day long to use them up.’
‘Of course I have a driver’s licence!’ Irma puffed, resenting the suggestion. ‘I have an old classmate who’s a gynaecologist and she writes out
driver’s-licence certificates at every alumni meeting. But then my children took my car away, just like that, and me a grown woman, with the right to go where I please! I’m sure you
remember my little red car?’
Siiri was the only one who remembered it; she had been friends with Irma for a long time. She had been in it when Irma drove the wrong way down Mannerheimintie, the busiest thoroughfare in
Helsinki, and the police pulled her over in front of the Swedish Theatre. That was enough for her children to take the little red car back to the dealer’s. The Ambassador thought taking the
car away was too severe a punishment. It was no great sin to drive a bit crazily past the Swedish Theatre; they were always doing roadworks on that corner, and even a tenth-generation Helsinki
resident like Irma couldn’t be sure which way you were supposed to go on any given day.
