"Gill, B.M. - Death Drop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

"You've come to ask me about the sketch." Characteristically she plunged straight in. She wondered if Fleming would stay around to pick up the pieces. His eyes had warmed as their glances met, but now he was standing with his back to the window watching her and saying nothing.

Brannigan sat on the arm of the nearest chair. He felt extremely tired as if he were battling through a force eight gale.

"Yes -- three questions. Did you actually see David drawing the caterpillar?"

"Yes, in the infirmary -- on the day he was due to go back into the main school. One day last week."

"Did he have a shocking or frightening experience just before he drew it ?"

"No. To my almost certain knowledge -- no. He was a bit quiet on the last day -- but none of the boys like getting back to work. I thought he did the drawing--just a fun thing -- to cheer himself up."

"Why didn't you bring the drawing straight to me?"

She smiled slightly. "Together with the rat's tail and the conkers and Milford Minor's valentine? Do you seriously expect me to gather up all the boys' offerings and pass them on to you ?"

Jenny's forthrightness occasionally sailed rather close to insolence, but Brannigan let it pass. "You regarded it with sufficient seriousness to give it to David's father."

"Had it been any other item in my duffel bag given me by David I would have given it to his father. It happened to be a sketch of a caterpillar."

"You couldn't tell by the nature of the drawing and the writing that the child was seriously disturbed?"

"No, I couldn't. It was a babyish drawing and babyish writing. I thought he'd done it that way for fun."

Brannigan looked at Fleming. "Have you anything to ask Nurse Renshaw yourself?"

There was one question he hadn't thought of asking her earlier. "Had you any other patients at that particular time -- anyone who could have got at David and worried him in some way?"

"Three other boys had mumps. Two were the Rillman twins and the other was Peter Sellick."

Brannigan said, "Seven-year-olds. Not averse to putting a caterpillar in a bed -- but nothing more sinister."

He suggested that Fleming should go along to see Mrs. Robbins. "She's a housemother for want of a better word. Her flat is near the Hammond House dormitory." It was policy that all housemasters should be married, but when Hammond's wife had left him at the end of the autumn term he could hardly request Hammond to leave too. Mrs. Robbins, a widowed sister of Laxby, the music master, was standing in temporarily. Dwindling numbers had made it possible to convert two small dormitories into a self-contained unit for her.

He asked Jenny if she were in.

"She was watching the early news here. She left when the film started. She isn't due to see the boys to bed until later, but she wouldn't have time to leave the premises."

Mollie Robbins didn't hear Brannigan's knock on her door. She was listening through her headphones to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. It was a recording that Laxby had given her and he had promised to come around later that evening to discuss Schoenberg's twelve-note theory. She had been researching the music of the Second Viennese School and hoped to get some facts down on her typewriter just as soon as she had seen the little horrors to bed.

Fleming's first impression of her, when Brannigan after his second unanswered knock opened the door, was of a huge blousy woman in headphones who looked at them with a dazedly beatific expression which quickly turned to annoyance. She switched off the recording and removed the headphones.

Brannigan introduced Fleming.

The last hazy notes of the music drifted from her memory as she looked at him. She saw a tall, gaunt, tired-looking man who was looking back at her as if he were trying to probe the recesses of her mind.

She looked away nervously. The disruption of her musical interlude was annoyance enough -- God knew she needed the refreshment of it if she were to carry on her duties -- without having to put up with what threatened to be a distressing and embarrassing interview with the dead child's father.

Brannigan asked if they might sit down.