Strange Sally Diamond

‘Oh my God! You can speak. I never knew. Now, what did you say?’ and I had to repeat that I wouldn’t be needing Dad’s pension any more because he was dead.

She looked behind me at the butcher’s wife. ‘She can speak,’ she said, and the butcher’s wife said, ‘I’m amazed!’

‘I am so sorry,’ Mrs Sullivan continued to shout, and the butcher’s wife reached out and put her hand on my elbow. I flinched and shrugged off her touch.

‘When is the funeral?’ she said. ‘I never saw it on the death notices.’

‘There’s no funeral,’ I said. ‘I cremated him myself.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Butcher and I told her that I had put him in the incinerator because he had told me to put him out with the bins when he died.

There was a silence, and I was turning to leave when Mrs Butcher said, with a tremor in her voice, ‘How did you know he was dead?’ And then Mrs Sullivan said to Mrs Butcher, ‘I don’t know who to call. The guards or a doctor?’

I turned back to her and said, ‘It’s too late for a doctor, he’s dead. Why would you call the guards?’

‘Sally, when somebody dies, the authorities have to be notified.’

‘But it’s none of their business,’ I protested. They were making me confused.

When I got home, I played the piano for a while. Then I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I took the tea into Dad’s office. The phone began to ring and I turned it off. I looked at the envelope on his laptop with ‘Sally’ written on the front, and ‘to be opened after my death’ in Dad’s shaky handwriting. It didn’t say how long after his death I should open it, and I wondered if it might contain a birthday card. My birthday wasn’t for another nine days, so I was going to wait until then. I would be forty-three years old. I felt like it was going to be a good year.

It was a large envelope and, when I picked it up, I could feel that it was thick and that it contained many pages. Maybe it wasn’t a birthday card. I put it into the pocket of my skirt. I would read it after Murder She Wrote and Judge Judy. I settled myself into the living room on the sofa I used to share with Mum. I looked at Dad’s empty armchair and thought about him for a few minutes.

I was soon distracted by the goings-on in Cabot Cove. This time Jessica Fletcher’s gardener had been up to no good with the rich lawyer’s widow and she killed him when he refused to leave his wife. As usual, Jessica outsmarted the Sheriff in solving the crime. During one of the ad breaks in Judge Judy, I heard a knock on the front door.

I was shocked. Who could it be? Perhaps Dad had ordered something on his computer, though that was unlikely because he hadn’t used it for about a month before he died. I turned up the television loud as the knocking continued. It stopped and I had to rewind the TV because Judge Judy had started again and I’d missed a bit. Then a head appeared at the window to my left. I screamed. But it was only Angela.

4

Dr Angela Caffrey had been Mum’s business partner and took over the practice after Mum died. I had visited the practice many times over the years. I didn’t mind Angela touching me or examining me, because she always explained clearly what was going to happen. And she always made me better. Dad liked her and so did I.

‘Sally! Are you all right? Mrs Sullivan told me Tom has died, is that right?’

I stood awkwardly at the door to Dad’s study in the hall. In the past, Dad always invited Angela into the sitting room and offered her tea, but I didn’t want her to stay long. Angela had other ideas.

‘Shall we go through to the kitchen, and you can tell me all about it?’

I led her down the steps to the kitchen.

‘Oh, you have the place spotless, your mum would be so proud. You know, I haven’t been here for ages.’ She pulled out Dad’s chair from the table and sat down on it. I stood with my back to the range.

‘So, Sally, did your father die?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, poor Tom! Was he ill for a long time?’

‘He slowed down a lot and then he went to bed about a month ago and didn’t get up.’

‘I wonder why he didn’t call me? I’d have come straight out. I could have made sure he was comfortable.’

‘He wrote pain med prescriptions for me to get filled in Roscommon.’

‘He wrote prescriptions for himself? That’s not exactly legal.’

‘He put them in my name. He said he wouldn’t go to jail and neither would I.’

‘I see.’ She paused. ‘And when exactly did he pass away?’

‘I found him dead on Wednesday when I brought him in his tea in the morning.’

‘Oh my dear, that must have been so distressing. Now, I don’t want to pry but Maureen Kenny –’

‘Who?’

‘Maureen, the butcher’s wife? She said that you said there was no funeral and that you had him cremated on your own.’

‘Yes.’

‘And where was this cremation held?’

‘In the green barn.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The green barn.’

‘Here? Behind the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you not think to call someone? Me, the hospital, an undertaker?’

I felt like I was in trouble, like I’d done something wrong.

‘He told me to put him out with the bins.’

‘He … what? He was joking, he didn’t mean that!’