Death in Practice Read online

  Death in Practice

  HAZEL HOLT

  I would like to thank the members of my local veterinary practice for their help and also to point out that nothing like this ever happened there.

  For Nat, Ant and Iain

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  By Hazel Holt

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “You let those animals rule your life,” Anthea said, leaning on the worktop and watching disapprovingly while I cut up some cooked chicken. “They’re thoroughly spoilt.”

  “I know,” I said defensively, “but Tris is an old dog now and can’t eat tinned food, and Foss is so picky – if I open a tin for him I always have to give half of it to the birds.”

  “Kathy’s just the same,” Anthea went on, now launched on a familiar theme, “always been silly about animals, ever since she was a child – cried herself to sleep night after night when that wretched tortoise died. But even so I never thought she’d end up working for a vet!”

  Anthea’s younger daughter is an assistant at our local vet’s, something her mother regards as “the waste of a good education”, unlike her older sister who is not only married with two children (thus providing grandmother fodder) but also head of the physiotherapy department of our local hospital.

  “Jean has really got somewhere already and there’s no saying where she may end up. But Kathy’s stuck in that dead-end job – I mean, where will it lead? Nowhere!”

  “But she’s happy,” I said, placatingly.

  “That’s as may be,” Anthea said austerely, “but she ought to be looking to the future.”

  “She’s still young!” I protested.

  “She’s thirty-five,” Anthea replied, “and she hasn’t even got a steady boyfriend.”

  “Thirty-five’s nothing now,” I said, “not like in our day.”

  “Nothing’s like it was in our day, more’s the pity!”

  “I agree with you over lots of things, but, from what I can gather, it’s much more fun being a thirty-something nowadays than it was when we were young.”

  “Oh fun!” Anthea said. “Life’s not about fun!”

  “I suppose not,” I said meekly.

  As my friend Rosemary always says, “Anthea is a good soul, kind-hearted and generous to a fault, and one of my dearest friends, but one must always remember that she has no sense of humour.”

  “I don’t know what she does with herself,” Anthea said, “she never seems to go anywhere. Just sits at home in that flat of hers.”

  Anthea has always resented the fact that Kathy, although unmarried, wanted a place of her own and had taken what her mother described scornfully as “that poky little place down by the railway station”. It is, in fact, a perfectly pleasant flat in a converted Edwardian house, by the station admittedly, but also overlooking the seafront and very nice too.

  “But she sings with the Light Opera Group doesn’t she? Thea said how good she was in The Gondoliers.”

  “Oh the Opera Group,” Kathy said dismissively. “She’ll never meet anyone there – just a lot of women and all the men are married.”

  “Perhaps she just enjoys singing,” I suggested.

  “And another thing,” Anthea continued resentfully. “Jim and I hardly ever see her. She used to come to Sunday lunch, but now she just makes excuses all the time.”

  I reflected that if Anthea went on and on to Kathy about her single state it wasn’t surprising that she avoided her parents.

  “Talk about Mrs Bennett and marrying off your daughters,” I said to Rosemary when I reported the conversation. “Anyone would think we were living in the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first!”

  “Well,” I said soothingly to Anthea, “I suppose we can’t lead their lives for them.”

  “It’s all very well for you to say that. Michael’s married – such a nice girl, Thea – and you have a beautiful granddaughter.”

  “You have two grandsons,” I pointed out.

  “They’re wonderful, of course and I’m devoted to them, but I would have liked a granddaughter. If only Kathy…”

  Fortunately Foss chose this moment to appear in the kitchen and jumped onto the worktop, poking his nose inquisitively, as he always does, into whatever happened to be there.

  “Sheila! Surely you don’t let him do that!” Anthea cried as Foss tentatively put his paw in the sugar bowl.

  “Of course not!” I said mendaciously as I scooped Foss up and put him down on the floor.

  “Bad boy!” I said in what I hoped was a severe manner. Foss gave me a look of contempt and stalked off into the hall.

  This little episode luckily diverted Anthea’s mind from the iniquities of her younger daughter and she reverted to the real reason for her visit.

  “Now what about that committee meeting? You really must come – I need you to keep Maureen in order.”

  Maureen Phillips is a meek woman who had once been moved to disagree with one of Anthea’s suggestions and who has been, consequently, branded by her as a red revolutionary who has to be kept down at all costs.

  “Oh dear I don’t think I can,” I said. “I said I’d babysit for Thea and Michael that evening. But, really, I’m sure you’re more than capable of controlling Maureen.”

  “Well that is a nuisance – Marjorie’s busy too. Honestly, I can’t imagine why people say they’ll be on committees if they never turn up for meetings.”

  Ignoring the unfairness of her comments (I seem to spend a great deal of my life sitting around tables being bored out of my mind) I did my best to soothe her.

  “Do have a cup of coffee,” I said.

  But Anthea, probably with the memory of Foss’s dark paw in the sugar bowl, declined and, gathering up her belongings, went away to chivvy someone else.

  As it happened I saw Kathy the very next day. Foss, in unheeding pursuit of a rabbit, managed to tear his back leg quite badly on some barbed wire and when I phoned they said to bring him in straight away. Unlike my dog Tris, who regards the vet’s as some sort of unspeakable gulag, Foss doesn’t mind it at all. Like all Siamese he obviously thinks that any attention is better than none and all the girls there respond to his blue-eyed charm.

  “Poor boy!” Alison, one of the junior assistants, said as she removed him tenderly from his carrying cage, “what a nasty cut. I’ll get Kathy to clean it up before Diana sees it.”

  “Isn’t Simon here?” I asked Kathy as she carefully wiped round the wound. “He usually sees Foss.”

  “Oh, Simon’s left. He’s gone to set up on his own at Newton Abbott. Diana’s taken on a lot of his patients. But Keith’s still here, and Ben.”

  “Are you getting anyone else? It’s such a large practice – I mean, Ben mostly deals with horses and farm animals, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she seemed to hesitate, “yes, we are getting someone else.” She looked around to see if anyone was within earshot. “As a matter of fact they’re taking on a new partner. You see Simon had put a lot of money into the practic
e and, now he’s gone, they’ve had to find someone who can do the same.”

  “I see.”

  “There was a bit of a cash-flow problem – ” She broke off. “I shouldn’t be telling you this – please don’t say anything.”

  “No, of course not. Well, I’ll be interested to see the new partner. What’s his name?”

  “Malcolm Hardy.”

  “Really? I used to know his father – at least, he was a friend of my parents. There was certainly a lot of money there!”

  Just then Diana came in and said I should leave Foss there while his leg was treated.

  “It’s a nasty tear,” she said. “I’ll have to give him a light anaesthetic, so come back this afternoon, about two o’clock.”

  As one always does, I fretted at the thought of Foss having an anaesthetic. Of course I knew he’d be all right but, although he’s very strong, he’s not a young cat, so, in my anxiety, I was back at the surgery quite a bit before two.

  “He’s fine,” Kathy said, “but Diana just wants to have a word before you take him home. She won’t be long if you don’t mind waiting.”

  Relieved, I sat in the waiting room which, since surgery didn’t begin until three o’clock, was empty. I inspected the notices on the board. Flyers for dog-shows and sheep-dog trials, advertisement for organic dog-foods, along with the personal cards wanting homes for kittens (“two beautiful tabby boys and a sweet tortoiseshell girl”), dogs (“crossbred lurcher, good with children”) or horses (“hunter, 17 hands, quiet to ride and box”). Then I settled down with a copy of Hello! magazine, which I greatly enjoy but never actually buy.

  I was distracted from the lush description of the wedding of a minor European royal by the sound of voices raised in one of the consulting rooms. The door was slightly open and I heard Diana say sharply, “No, that’s quite unacceptable.”

  Another voice, male and one that I didn’t recognise, said, “Well those are my terms, take them or leave them. But I think you’re going to have to take them, aren’t you?”

  “But we need Ben.”

  “Not if we get rid of the farming side. I thought I’d explained – the obvious way to go is with the small animals. That’s where the money is.”

  “But…”

  “And now Dexters’ are packing up we’ll have all their clients. No, Ben Turner will have to go.”

  “But he’s been part of the practice for years.”

  “He’s getting past it anyway. Spends half his time gossiping and drinking tea with hill farmers who use us about twice a year. No, there’s no room for sentiment in business, it’s simply not economically viable.”

  “He’s on a three month contract.”

  “OK. That’ll suit us fine – give us time to build up the profitable side of the business and then, in due course, we can get a young trainee to do some of the routine stuff – it’ll cost us less that way.”

  “I can’t persuade you to reconsider, Malcolm?”

  “It’s the sensible way to go, you must see that. Anyway, the fact remains that the decision is now mine to take.”

  “Very well, if that’s what you say. You will have to tell him though.”

  “No problem. Right then, now we’ve got that settled I’ll be off. Tell Turner I want to see him tomorrow morning – ten-thirty. OK?”

  There was the sound of footsteps and then silence. After a few minutes I heard Kathy’s voice.

  “Oh Diana, Mrs Malory’s here to collect her Siamese… Diana, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Diana’s voice was muffled as if she’d been crying. “Yes, I’m all right. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be along to see her.”

  I quickly moved over to the far side of the waiting room so that Diana wouldn’t know I’d overheard her confrontation with Malcolm Hardy. When she appeared she looked more or less her usual self though her manner was, understandably, abstracted. She brought Foss through in his carrying cage and said, “He’s still a bit dopey from the anaesthetic, but he’s done very well. Just give him a tiny bit of fish or something light to eat, but he may not want anything. Don’t let him out for a few days and I think you’d better put a plastic collar on to stop him chewing the bandages. It was quite a deep wound – I had to staple it.” She smiled slightly at my expression. “That’s what we do now instead of stitches. Anyway, try and keep the dressing on and bring him back for me to see the day after tomorrow.”

  “He’s all right?”

  “Yes, don’t worry. Oh, and I’ve given him a shot of antibiotic, just in case.”

  “Thank you so much.” I looked down at Foss now sitting up in his cage, pleased to be the centre of attention. “He seems to be recovering.”

  “Yes, he’s fine. The girls will give you a collar for him.”

  She spoke absently now as though her thoughts were elsewhere and so I went away to find Kathy.

  I knew from the start that putting a collar on Foss (they look like a sort of plastic Elizabethan ruff and are meant to stop the animal getting at any wound) would be difficult. I finally got the wretched thing fastened around his neck with Foss bellowing his horror and disapproval but then, having decided that he couldn’t see over it he started walking backwards, bumping into things and miaowing piteously. Tris, who always ostentatiously avoids Foss when he comes back from the vet smelling of disinfectant, suddenly appeared and, appalled at the apparition before him, began barking madly. After a few minutes of this I decided that the dressing would have to take its chance and I took the collar off. Foss gave me a cold, reproachful stare and went into the kitchen, where he polished off the chicken remaining on Tris’s plate and complained loudly until I gave him a large amount of fish, after which he went to sleep on my bed for the rest of the day.

  I made myself a strong cup of tea and collapsed into a chair. Only then did I begin to think about the conversation I had overheard. Poor Diana Norton was certainly going to miss Simon – indeed we all would. Not only was he a brilliant vet, but he was also kind, considerate and very good at dealing with anxious animal owners. Malcolm Hardy, on the other hand, sounded (from what I had heard today) thoroughly disagreeable. I could only suppose that no one else had been found with a suitable amount of money to put into the practice. It also seemed as if he had a controlling share and was able to do whatever he liked, such as getting rid of Ben Turner. I could understand why Diana was so upset. She’s very loyal and Ben is a nice, capable middle-aged man who’s been with the practice for years. For a moment I thought of leaving the practice as a sort of protest, but, as Malcolm Hardy said, Fred Dexter – the only other vet in Taviscombe – has just retired and there’s nobody else this side of Williton. I was also sorry for Keith, the junior vet, and for Kathy and the other assistants. If the way I had heard him speak to Diana, who was after all a partner, was anything to go by, Malcolm would be even more unpleasant to those he thought of as underlings. All this would give Anthea more ammunition in her campaign of disapproval. Perhaps, indeed, it might be a reason for Kathy to leave. But then, if she did, what else could she do, in Taviscombe at any rate? She was a trained veterinary assistant, but there was no other practice here for her to go to.

  “Anthea will like it even less,” I said to Rosemary the next day, “if Kathy goes away. She was cross enough about her getting a flat of her own, but at least she’s still in Taviscombe.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she will. Kathy’s a quiet little thing and I expect she’ll just keep her head down and put up with things.”

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed. “I’ve often thought it’s extraordinary how someone as shy as that can get up on stage and sing quite big parts with the opera company.”

  “Don’t they say that shy people make the best actors because then they can lose themselves in their parts? Anyway Kathy’s got a lovely voice and she always looks as if she really enjoys singing.”

  “I believe they’re doing Iolanthe next,” I said, “and Kathy’s playing Phyllis, which is really the seco
nd lead.”

  “I know, Anthea told me. She was pleased as Punch though she always pretends not to think anything of Kathy’s singing.”

  “Oh she’s devoted to her really, it’s just that she wants Kathy to be as she would like her to be. Thank goodness I never had a daughter – I expect I’d have been just the same. With Michael, though, he just went his own sweet way!”

  “Jilly was too strong-minded for me,” Rosemary said affectionately. “I could never have influenced her if she didn’t want to be influenced. Perhaps,” she said sadly, “I should have tried harder with Colin.”

  Rosemary’s daughter Jilly (married with two children) lives near at hand in Taviscombe and is very close to her mother. Colin (divorced and childless) has always been remote emotionally and, now that he’s living in Canada, is equally remote geographically,

  “Colin will be all right,” I said, as I’ve said many times before when Rosemary fretted. “He’s always lived in a world of his own – lots of academics do – and I’m really sure he’s happy in it.”

  “Yes, of course, I know you’re right, it’s just… oh you know!”

  “I wonder,” I said thoughtfully, “why there aren’t more great works of literature about mothers worrying – it’s a universal experience, after all, and one to which a lot of bosoms would return an echo. It’s a pity Shakespeare wasn’t a woman – he’d have done it rather well, but, being a man, I don’t suppose it occurred to him. I wonder if Mary Arden worried about him. I bet she did when he went off to London to be a strolling player.”

  “I’m sure Anthea worries about Kathy,” Rosemary said. “All that disapproval is only because she frets about her.”

  “I wonder what Malcolm Hardy will be like to the pet-owners?” I said. “He can hardly speak to them like he spoke to Diana – not if he wants to keep them that is.”

  “Well,” Rosemary said firmly, “if he’s unpleasant to me or either of the dogs, I’ll go to Webbers in Williton, however inconvenient it is!”