The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Read Online Free PDF

a heart attack? Or is it that his children have started dying? Is it my turn? To play a card, I mean.’
    ‘Assaulted! Olavi was assaulted, yesterday evening, in his own home!’ Reino shouted, and everyone went quiet. Then he sniffed and started to bawl again. Irma dropped her cards into
her lap and Siiri looked helplessly at Anna-Liisa and continued clutching Reino’s hand. The Ambassador stared at his cards as if nothing had happened.
    Reino stood up to his full height, knocking his chair over with a clatter.
    ‘Olavi Raudanheimo was assaulted yesterday in the shower!’ he shouted, even louder than before. He looked dreadful bellowing like that, his face covered in tears and anger, his chin
half unshaven. A large man in tracksuit bottoms with his dirty shirt hem flapping.
    ‘We heard you the first time,’ Anna-Liisa said calmly. ‘What exactly do you mean by assaulted? You must remember that assault is a way of wielding power. It doesn’t
necessarily have anything to do with pleasure or desire, if you get my meaning. It’s an act of subjugation and humiliation.’
    ‘Whose turn is it?’ the Ambassador asked restlessly. He wanted the game to continue because he had a good hand.
    Reino tried to pick up his chair but grew flustered when he couldn’t get it upright, and started to wail again.
    ‘That damned male nurse . . . that fag! He was supposed to be giving him a shower . . . Olavi told me himself, damn it all!’
    ‘Sit down, Reino,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘And please watch your language. Was this in the morning or the evening? Could somebody help him with his chair?’
    As a language and literature teacher, Anna-Liisa was clearly used to handling the unruly and shepherding the restless. Irma was first to obey, picking up Reino’s chair and trying to get
him to sit down. It wasn’t easy; Reino resisted, trembling and rubbing his face compulsively with his sleeve.
    ‘
An
,
auf
,
hinter
,
in
– I just drew a nice red ten,’ the Ambassador trilled, continuing the game by himself. He had a habit of reciting the
German prepositions he’d learned in grammar school while he sorted his cards. Irma and Reino’s cards were on the floor but Siiri gripped hers in one hand until her fingers hurt.
    ‘I don’t know when it happened. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter,’ Reino said, finally sitting back down, slightly calmer. He tried to take a deep breath and
blew his nose again into Irma’s handkerchief, which looked smaller than before. ‘But Good God! A war veteran . . . can’t even wash himself.’
    ‘What are you all worked up about, Mr Reino?’
    Head nurse Virpi Hiukkanen had appeared. None of them had ever seen her run before, but now she was moving so fast that her nurse’s shoes were flapping. She took hold of Reino’s
shoulder with a firm grip, which only made him angrier. Now he started to really throw a fit. His walker took off on its own, the deck of cards flew into the air, and the chair fell over again, and
even Virpi was frightened. A flock of startled members of staff gathered around them, all of them strangers except for Virpi, whose thin, sharp voice pierced through the general hubbub.
    ‘Get this patient to the dementia ward and sedate him!’
    Four Russian women grabbed hold of Reino, who had suddenly changed from a resident to a patient, and gave him an injection. Reino yelled some choice obscenities and thrashed around. His voice
echoed down the hall all the way to the locked ward. Irma started picking the cards up off the floor although it was hard to bend over because she was somewhat plump and very busty. The Ambassador
hurried to help her, peeping down her blouse all the while.
    ‘I don’t think damn is such a terrible word,’ Irma puffed, putting the red stack of cards down on the table.
    Then she told the story of the time her husband Veikko was screwing a bookshelf to the wall and the shelf fell with all the books on it onto the back of his neck and he shouted