He couldn’t.
‘At least Sergeant Packer retrieved my briefcase,’ he managed, and he wondered if she’d heard that his voice sounded odd. For heaven’s sake, what was the matter with him? He was behaving like a schoolboy.
‘You really do have a conference to prepare for?’
‘Hey, that’s what I told Dad and Daisy. Do you think I’d lie?’
‘Only if you couldn’t get what you want any other way.’
He tried a glare but it didn’t come off. She was gorgeous! But he had to stay serious. He had to concentrate on something other than that beautiful smile. ‘She’s maligning me, Bertram.’ Joss bent and fondled his dog’s velvety ears. ‘You hear that? I cook her a meal to die for and she maligns me.’
‘There you go again. Who cooked the pies?’
‘Mrs Hobbs might have,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘But who fetched them. At great personal cost.’
‘Personal cost?’
‘I had to drive a pink Volkswagen.’
‘There is that.’ Then she frowned as the front doorbell pealed. ‘Who on earth…’
‘Maybe it’s another sofa,’ Joss told her. ‘Daisy told me there was more to come.’
‘Another sofa? How many do you think I need?’
It wasn’t another sofa. It was a crate of good china, with a problem attached.
‘I thought I’d drop these in and ask…’
Amy knew Marigold Waveny well. Her husband, Lionel, was the kite builder in the nursing home, and since Lionel and his kites had removed themselves from her ultra-neat home she’d never been happier. Neither had Lionel. Sometimes Amy wondered whether he’d feigned his senility to get more room for his kite-making. He and Marigold were still happily married-possibly much happier apart than they’d ever been together. Marigold spent her days at the nursing home, admiring kites, but at night she returned to her immaculate little home where there wasn’t a kite in sight.
‘I would have brought these earlier,’ she told them, handing over her box to Joss with gratitude. ‘But I was… I wasn’t very well. I had my phone switched to the answering machine so I didn’t hear about what Daisy was organising until just now.’ She gave Joss a shy smile. ‘Then I thought, Of course, I have all this china that I don’t even like.’
Amy lifted a cup and gasped. ‘Marigold! It’s Royal Doulton. It’s beautiful.’
‘You enjoy it. Heaven knows, you do enough for my Lionel.’
‘I wouldn’t be brave enough to use it,’ Amy told her, and Marigold shook her head.
‘I have Royal Doulton, too,’ she told them. ‘But not such a loud pattern. This belonged to Lionel’s mother, and if you dropped it I’d be very pleased. And I thought…’ The voluble little lady faded to silence for a minute and then worked up courage. ‘I thought…if I brought something…a gift…while the doctor was here…’
‘Yes?’ Joss was ushering her into the kitchen while she was speaking. His eyes were twinkling and he was smiling at Amy over the top of the elderly lady’s head. He’d been a doctor for long enough to know what was coming. ‘You didn’t need to bring a gift to speak to me.’
‘No, but I thought…’
‘Tell us, Marigold,’ Amy prodded, and Marigold took a deep breath and started.
‘Well…’
‘Well?’
‘I think… I think I’m dying.’
Joss blinked. He set down the carton of china and thought about it. ‘You what?’
‘I just…’ She shook her head as if trying to get rid of something. Get rid of terror? ‘My heart’s failing,’ she whispered. ‘It’s going to stop. I can feel it. I’m dying and who cares about fancy china then?’
She stared wildly from Joss to Amy and back again-and burst into tears.
Finally they got it out of her-the reason for her terror. She was sitting in one of Amy’s new chairs while Amy knelt before her, holding her hands, and Joss listened. And watched.
‘I’ve been so tired,’ she told them. ‘For weeks I’ve been so tired I feel like I’m about to fall over. But when I go to bed at night I can’t sleep. I just lie there and my heart hammers and hammers and I get so upset… I have thumping in my chest-it’s thumping now. The palpitations are awful. I can’t seem to get enough breath. Everything’s just too much effort. I try… I’ve been going into the nursing home every day to see Lionel but it’s been too much. Today I felt so dreadful I didn’t go.’ She looked distressfully at Amy.
She should have realised, Amy thought ruefully. Marigold spent every day at the nursing home and today Amy hadn’t even missed her. It was just…well, today had been different.
Lionel hadn’t realised-but, then, Lionel had been taken up by a new kite and Joss’s dog.
‘I stayed in bed,’ Marigold told them. ‘But it didn’t help. My heart’s thumping just the same. And it hurts. I thought… I thought I might die carrying that box but then I thought at least I’d die on the doctor’s doorstep and not at home by myself.’
Gee, thanks, Amy thought wryly. Just what every home needs-a corpse on the doorstep.
But Joss kneeled beside her, and his expression said he was taking this deadly seriously. He took Marigold’s wrist loosely between thumb and middle finger, counting her pulse as he glanced at his watch. His brow was furrowed in concentration.
‘Do we have a stethoscope, Amy?’ he asked, and she nodded and rose. Her bag was by the door-she acted as district nurse so she always had her bag handy.
‘Am I going crazy?’ Marigold whispered.
‘I don’t think you’re going crazy.’ Joss was watching her closely, his mind obviously in overdrive. ‘You’re very thin. Have you always been this thin or have you lost weight recently?’
‘I’ve lost a bit,’ she admitted, looking fearfully up at him. ‘I’m so tired. I can’t be bothered cooking.’
‘So you’ve lost weight and you’re constantly tired?’
‘I
‘You’re a spring chicken compared to those in the nursing home.’ He tilted her chin and ran his hand down her throat, gently feeling. ‘Mrs Waveny, do you have any family history of thyroid trouble?’
‘I…’ She thought about that and finally nodded, not sure what he was getting at. ‘Maybe I do. My mother had to take iodine for something. Would that be it?’
‘Maybe it would.’ Amy handed Joss a stethoscope, and he held it to Marigold’s chest and listened. There was silence. Bertram wuffled and snuffed beside the fire, a dog at peace, but there was no peace on Marigold’s face.
‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ she whispered as Joss finished listening.
Joss hesitated, thinking it through. He wasn’t a physician. He was a surgeon, for heaven’s sake-but he was practically sure he was right.
‘Marigold, you have what we call atrial fibrillation,’ he told her. ‘It’s a fast, irregular heartbeat.’
She gasped. ‘Is that bad?’
‘It’s not good. But I don’t think you’re dying. I suspect…’ Once more he ran his hands down her throat, feeling the swelling. ‘I suspect you have an overactive thyroid. I can’t be sure until we run a blood test-which I’d imagine we can’t do here-but for the moment I’m going to assume that’s the case.’
‘I… The thyroid is causing heart failure?’
‘You don’t have heart failure. Your heart isn’t failing-it’s just running on overdrive. Now, I’m not certain, but you have all the signs. You’re tired, your neck seems a little swollen. You’re short of breath, you’re agitated, you have pains in the chest and you have a fast, irregular heartbeat. If I’m right-if this is just an overactive thyroid-then it can be controlled with tablets.’
She stared, torn between disbelief and hope. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not kidding.’
There was a silence while she took that on board, her face lighting up by the moment.
‘I’m not mad?’
‘You’re not mad.’
‘Then what do I do about it?’ She gazed from Joss to Amy and then back again. ‘I guess…forget about it until I
