The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (11 page)

‘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.

‘This smell must be the myrrh that they sing about at the Christmas concerts,’ she said, and sang a bit of the star boys’ song in falsetto. ‘And they hastened to offer
him precious gifts, gold, frankincense, and myyyyrrh. And myyyyrrh.’

Siiri was happy that Irma was in a good mood, and sang along without embarrassment. There were so many bizarre people on the tram that two singing grannies fitted right in. She knew that on a
sunny day like today, Irma loved going down Bulevardi, the turnaround at the Hietalahti flea market and then the route around the block along the seashore.

Irma spoke of her admiration of the old buildings on Bulevardi, which were a bit too imposing for Siiri’s tastes. Simple structures pleased her more, and there were only a few of those on
Bulevardi. One of them had such wonderful broad balconies.

‘You mean that dirty green functionalist thing? But it’s so dreary!’ Irma exclaimed, then sighed when she saw the old red opera house. She hummed the Cherubino aria until they
got to the market square. She thought the Helsinki College of Technology was finer than the presidential palace, and wondered why the president’s official residence was called a palace, when
it was just an ordinary building.

‘Oh, no!’ Irma cried. ‘Have they turned the Hietalahti market square into a car park, too?’

‘Yes. And they don’t sell food in the market hall any more, just antiques.’

‘Have you noticed how silly antiques have got? Perfectly ordinary dishes and stools sold as antiques. But I love Wenzel Hagelstam’s antique show. I hope they never take that off the
air. I’d call up and complain. But they probably have a different host now. Such a pity.’

Irma talked the whole way there and back. They switched from the number 6 to the 10 again, and then to the number 4, at the stop by the old tram halls. Irma admired the tram halls so much that
there was almost no end to her praise. Earlier she had criticized – unnecessarily loudly – the dirty walls of the old conference centre and the trashy black make-up that two girls were
wearing. Luckily the girls had earphones in and were listening to loud rock so they didn’t hear Irma’s criticism.

As they passed the school of nursing, Irma was quiet for a moment. She looked at Siiri and said: ‘I’m sorry – who are you?’

Siiri didn’t understand what she meant, and said she was a home-care nurse and a close relative of Napoleon, but Irma didn’t laugh at all, she just looked distressed and asked where
they were taking her.

‘Home, Irma,’ Siiri said, and felt with a painful clarity her heart beating out a poor rhythm. She started to sweat. In her panic she took hold of Irma’s hand and tried to
sound calm. ‘I’m your good friend Siiri Kettunen, and I’m taking you back to our home at Sunset Grove.’

‘“Grove of Tuoni, grove of night”,’ Irma answered, from the Sibelius dirge, and a smile returned to her eyes. ‘
Döden, döden,
döden.
’

She was herself again, and resumed blurting out whatever came into her head. Siiri wasn’t listening any more, she was wondering with horror if Irma’s unexpected moment of confusion
was a normal part of ageing, the kind of thing that happens to everyone, or if it was something that she should be worried about. And how would she know if that sort of thing started happening to
her?

Irma and Anna-Liisa made Siiri go to the doctor. They thought her dizzy spells were far from harmless and ought to be looked at. Siiri thought it was unnecessary. Even if the
doctor did find a heart defect, she would just feel relieved. She ‘d rather die of a heart defect than cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. And under no circumstances would she agree to any
sort of procedure in the hopes of spending her one hundredth birthday at Sunset Grove and getting a rose and a hug from Sinikka Sundström. That’s what they did there when some poor soul
reached that advanced age. Last week one utterly muddle-headed hundred-year-old was caked and flowered even though nobody there even knew her name; neither the residents nor the nurses – nor
even the woman herself.

But Irma had become very suspicious about everything and she thought that Virpi Hiukkanen was meddling in some way in all the residents’ affairs, including their health.

‘You should get an advocate,’ she told Siiri. ‘Senile old ladies whose relatives aren’t up on the situation are fair game at Sunset Grove. If Virpi says that you have
dementia, your daughter will believe her. After all, she lives in a convent on the other side of the world. Do they even have telephones there? An elder-care advocate can look out for your
interests. It said in the paper that every old person should have one.’

‘Do you mean you think I should be put under guardianship?’

Siiri was a little offended, although she tried not to take Irma’s talk too seriously, since Irma herself was often confused. She also remembered reading that paranoia was a part of
Alzheimer’s, and was distressed at Irma’s increasing symptoms of dementia. But Irma was hard-headed and wouldn’t back down about the doctor. She thought their complaint about the
neglect of the elderly needed a doctor’s report on Siiri’s arrhythmia, otherwise no one would believe their story. She made her case quite persuasively and Siiri found herself wondering
how she ‘d become so well-versed in filing complaints.

‘Oh, I’ve filed them before,’ Irma said. ‘Two complaints to the Uudenmaan County Administrative Board. But they have a new name nowadays, since they’re probably
going to abolish the counties. How can you abolish something like that? Imagine if one day they announced that the county of Savo no longer existed. That would be pretty funny.’

Siiri was surprised about the complaints to the county board because Irma had never mentioned them before. Irma said she had complained about an unnecessary billing and about the constant
changes in the nursing staff too.

‘They’ve got new girls every week in this place. The newest ones can’t even speak Finnish. And besides, the place is completely understaffed so they’re overworked, with
one girl having to be in ten places at once,’ Irma said, then a sudden odd instinct told her the new name of the Uudenmaa County Administrative Board. ‘The ETE Centre, that’s what
it’s called! Now there’s a meaningless name. What genius thought that up?’

Complaining to various ‘centres’ seemed to be mostly a waste of time. Irma wasn’t the only one who had complained about Sunset Grove. The fat woman in A wing had complained
that they were giving her insulin shots in a completely random fashion, but she died before she received a reply. And blind Mrs Kukkonen had complained because she didn’t get food every day,
and when she did, it was always cold.

‘This boy would just come in and slam a box on the table and leave a blind woman sitting there alone. And now Mrs Kukkonen has dementia and is shut up in the closed unit,’ Irma said.
She said that if a complaint reached its destination before the sender died or was rendered senile, the ETE centre or some other centre sent a friendly-looking lady inspector to have a cup of
coffee with Sinikka Sundström.

‘Always the same woman – Ritva Niemistö! Look at that, I even remember her name. Then she writes a report that says the procedures at Sunset Grove are exemplary. They have her
reports pasted up on the wall of the lift, have you noticed?’

Siiri had, in fact, sometimes seen the sticker there, never guessing that it was a report generated by a complaint from Irma. Her friend was a lot sharper than she appeared to be. Maybe these
occasional spells of confusion were pure theatre – you never knew with Irma. And so Siiri promised to go to the doctor. She got an appointment surprisingly quickly, just two weeks away, when
she told the appointment girl that it was a case of a ninety-four-year-old woman with a heart defect.

‘As if it were an urgent matter!’ she told Irma with a laugh.

At the Health Clinic, Siiri Kettunen once more found a new ‘personal physician’ waiting for her. The doctor was so young that Siiri was moved to ask whether a
little girl like her could be a real doctor at all, but that was a mistake. By the time she remembered that there had been a series of articles in the paper about fake doctors, the girl doctor had
already taken offence.

‘Shall we get straight to business?’ the unknown personal physician said, after a brief lecture. She ordered Siiri to take off her blouse, then listened to her lungs with an ice-cold
stethoscope that almost stopped her heart, and wrote a referral to Meilahti Hospital for urgent tests. Apparently, the stethoscope was an instrument that gave the doctor a sense of certainty, the
way a blood-pressure cuff does a nurse.

‘I can order an ambulance,’ the doctor said, but that was a bit much, in Siiri’s opinion, so she thanked her politely for listening to her lungs and promised to catch the very
next tram to the hospital.

When Siiri got to Meilahti, she waited for two and a half hours. She read some Donald Duck comics, solved seven sudokus, and learned two long articles from last year’s
Health News by heart – one about sea buckthorn oil and another about dry mucous membranes – before she went in for her urgent tests. The handsome specialist figured out what Siiri
already knew: she had a heart arrhythmia. He spoke in a strained voice and wanted Siiri to have more tests and have a pacemaker installed to reset her rhythm.