Old Mrs. Hill was as loony as anything, anyone can tell you that much, and she wasn’t the kind of loony that the rest of the retirement home is, either. What’s that word they use these days? Psycho? No, no, the polite one. Insane, that’s it. Old Mrs. Hill was insane. Mr. Bold will tell you she was just an attention hog, darling, but that’s because Mr. Bold doesn’t believe in anything out of the ordinary-- why should he? The world is ordinary if he’s ever seen ordinary and you bet your pants he has. But the rest of the retirement home, they remember Old Mrs. Hill well, and they can tell you exactly what she was. The people around here, they can tell you anything, really… 

Mrs. Aberforth, she says she’s once walked in on Old Mrs. Hill, staring at the wall, eyes rolled up into her head so much you couldn’t see the grey or the black of them, only that terrible, terrible blank white. Mrs. Aberforth says that the poor old woman was speaking a voice too deep to be her own, promising newborn infants to the Dark Lord Satan --but you shouldn’t listen to what Mrs. Aberforth has to say, either, because if you tell Mrs. Aberforth about your cat it’ll be a tiger by the morning. Really something, isn’t she?
Anyone in the building would have heard the mad giggling that would come from her room in the middle of the night. (“Snoring,” will say Mr. Bold, scowling, “only snoring.”), awful, really, but there was something wrong with that woman, wrong in the head. (“Screaming!” Mrs. Aberforth will say, gesturing wildly, “Chortling! The evil, evil witch!”)... Hey, you really shouldn’t listen to Mrs. Aberforth. She’s just… really something, that’s what she is, you know?
Did you know that a shrink would drive over from the city every Thursday, just to sit Mrs. Hill down and have a talk? Or, no, wait, what’s the word they use these days, the polite one? Psychologist, that’s who. That’s who left those blue pills for her every once in a while, the blue pills that never made her any less crazy. Mrs. Aberforth says they smelled like that death, but she wouldn’t answer when anyone asked what exactly death smelled like, so no one is sure whether that’s loony or not.
Nurse Patty likes to say, after she’s had a few drinks at the bar with some friends, that there were bones in Mrs. Hill’s bedside drawers. Bones, can you believe that? Nurse Patty says (and don’t tell anyone she says that, it could get her in trouble, and she’s such a sweet girl) that when she left the home, Old Mrs. Hill would track her with her eyes out of the window, as though planning her own escape, or perhaps simply cursing those who still can leave this place. She says her grey eyes would look white from the driveway, and her face ashen. As though she was already dead, Nurse Patty says.
It was Nurse Patty, too, that walked into the room one morning to find her there, dead on the floor with the bottle of bright blue pills spilled on the floor. It was Nurse Patty that shrieked, blue eyes widening and Nurse Patty that slammed the door shut again, dyed blond hair sticking out in all directions. Why don’t you ask Nurse Patty, dear? She was the one who found her there. But don’t ask too much, mind you. Nurse Patty is such a sweet girl and she could get in trouble, you know. We wouldn’t want that, you know? You do know.
Nurse Patty will be having a nice cup of tea when you find her. Terrible, really, what she saw, she’ll tell you, terrible. Terrible world out there, where you have to walk in on dead bodies when you’re doing your job. Terrible, terrible world. It was dreadful, and it scared Nurse Patty so much. So many things out there to scare her, like old ladies taking their own lives. Poor Nurse Patty, she is so scarred now. She doesn’t know when she can walk into a room again. She’s the victim here, really, she’s the real victim. How thoughtless of Old Mrs. Hill.
When you ask, Nurse Patty will tell you that the home is a quiet place and that Mrs. Hill must have taken her own life. Who else? No one here would want to harm an old lady. (“Dreadful, dreadful, it was dreadful coming in on her looking all… dead and stuff.”) They aren’t that kind of place. They’re a warm home, loving and caring. (“Are your parents looking for a nice place to retire? No? What about your grandparents? We’re very nice here, really. No? You sure?”) ...Yeah, there might have been some rumours going around, but no one means harm. No one at all. We’re all harmless here. Harmless old people, harmless nurses. Besides, why would someone want to hurt Old Mrs. Hill? She wasn’t mean, or wealthy. She didn’t have many relatives, and the ones that she did were harmless. Well, harmless but certainly loony, too… What do they say these days? Crazy Gene? No, no the polite one… history of mental illness in the family, that’s it. And it was cute, too, you know? The cute kind of crazy. Yeah. Sure, they have a serious problem, but it’s a cute one, so it can’t be that serious, am I right? Like, y’know, from that book, you know the one? The sweet girl. Yeah, that’s her, you know.  That’s the kind of crazy that the Hills are. Except Old Mrs. Hill, she was just psycho, because she was an old woman and should have grown out of it by now. Didn’t she know it wasn’t cute? Wasn’t cute at all. Maybe you should talk to her shrink. He’s a nice boy, and he’ll know a lot more than Nurse Patty does. Really, he probably knows why she would do such a thing. He knows everything. Such a nice boy, and so smart, too.
The psychologist’s office will be behind a white door, perfectly spotless and neat. You won’t even know that doors could be neat, but this door will be. It will be a door that does its job and does its job very, very well. It will be the kind of door that would keep its pencils in one cup and its pens in another. You’ll pause for a second, wondering how your brain came up with that image, and you will take the neat, neat door by its neat silver door knob and you will enter. It will open so smoothly you won’t hear it.
Dr. Hamilton will be seated on a blue plastic computer chair (not the cheap kind but not the expensive kind, neither, but somewhere in the middle). He’ll glance up and you’ll know he’s a nice boy. Such a nice boy, so helpful. He’ll suggest that Old Mrs. Hill just must have had a condition that he had looked past and that he was so sorry. He’ll talk about old age and mental instability and blah-dee-blah-medical-lingo. He’s such a nice boy, really, so helpful. You can see him driving over all the way to the home every Thursday just to help Poor Old Mrs. Hill. He uses the polite terms, all the time. So polite. Doesn’t even call his patients insane. They obviously are, though, you’ll be able to see it real easy. He’s so sorry he didn’t notice her condition. He’d tried to help, but sometimes… Sometimes you just can’t… you know? Sometimes he just can’t. He just couldn’t, you know? You know. You know that you know. You always know.
You need to talk, really, you just need to talk to him so he can help. If you don’t talk to him, how’s he to know? Old Mrs. Hill didn’t talk to him, oh no she didn’t. Didn’t need his help, she’d say. Perfectly fine, she’d say. Wouldn’t say a word about what she was thinking, most days, that woman. She’d say she was fine. She’d say she didn’t need him. She’d say she didn’t have a problem. Almost as though she was hiding something. Hiding from him. Dr. Hamilton’s face will contort just slightly at that, eyes hardening.
“Hiding,” He’ll mutter to himself, a predatory gleam to his eyes. You’ll know that gleam well; some of the older police guys get that gleam sometimes. Not the evil eye, mind you. It’s the eye of someone determined to bring down anyone doing evil. It’s a scarier eye, in a way, scarier still on such a nice boy. “Always hiding,”
He’ll glance back up at you and give you a smile and you’ll be sure you imagined any trace of hatred on his face. He finds them eventually, he’ll tell you. He always finds them eventually. You’ll ask if he was late to find what Mrs. Hill was hiding and he’ll look up at you glumly and start talking medical blah-dee-blah again, and you’ll tune him out. Really knows what he’s doing, that one! You’ll notice, just then, that he keep his pencils in one cup and his pens in another on his neat, no-nonsense desk. What an organized boy! Don’t you wish you were that organized? Of course you do. He’ll ask if  he can help you with anything else, and you’ll tell him that it’s fine. He’s been a huge help so far, telling you all that medical blah-dee-blah and being so neat here in his neat, neat office. He’ll ask you to keep him posted and you’ll the office with absolutely no intention to.
Dr. Hamilton will carefully put his pen in his pen cup as you leave the room. He won’t fold his hands under his chin or collapse into mad laughter or stroke a white rabbit. That’s not his style- he’s such a nice boy.
He won’t pull out a black and white photograph of Poor Old Mrs. Hill, or a long bloody knife. Instead he’ll just stare at the air in front of him.
“I did the right thing,” He’ll say. “I did the right thing.”
There will be no response, because he’ll be the only person there in the neat white no-nonsense office behind the neat-white no-nonsense door with all the pens in one cup and all the pencils in the other, the good, organized boy that he is.
“She got what she deserved,” He’ll continue, almost uncertainly, as though he’s waiting for someone to agree with him. “I found what she deserved. It was justice.”
There will be no response again, but this time he’ll nod, blue eyes softening, shoulders relaxing, as though he’d thought he would need to prove his point but was told otherwise. He’ll have the confirmation he was looking for. He will know what Old Mrs. Hill was guilty of, even if no one else ever did.
I’m not just doing this because I like to see the dead bodies. He will think, taking a bite of a shiny green apple and turning to the paper he was looking at, I’m doing the right thing. I’m making the world a better place.
He’ll keep telling himself that, and he won’t listen.
Somewhere else, Nurse Patty will take another sip of her tea, Mrs. Aberforth will refuse to look at Mr. Bold as he passes her in the hallway, and relatively unremarkable classical music will be played at Mrs. Hill’s funeral to go along with the relatively unremarkable flowers and the relatively unremarkable guests.
The death will be ruled a suicide. What else could it be?