Three

JENNY WAS IN the staffroom watching a film on television when Brannigan and Fleming came in. She could tell by their faces that the interview hadn't been a quiet pussyfooting over delicate areas of dissent. Swords had been out on both sides. If they were sheathed now it was an uneasy truce.

Brannigan, relieved that Jenny was alone in the room, indicated the television. She went over and switched it off.

"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.

"Of course." She uttered a few polite words of sympathy to Fleming which he acknowledged with a slight nod of the head.

Physically she appalled him. He tried to resist forming a prejudice. How she looked didn't matter.

Brannigan had sketched in a brief outline of her duties on the walk over to her flat and he left it now to Fleming to take the initiative.

"Mr. Fleming wants to ask you some questions about David. He understands about your dormitory duties and so on. Answer him as fully as you can."

"Of course." She folded her hands in her lap, uncomfortably aware of her bitten nails. Resentment burned in her. This was her own time. One of her escape periods into a world made civilised- by music. In her young days she had hoped to become a concert pianist. A severed nerve in her right hand had put paid to that. What did he think she was – a lump of lard? An intellectual moron with rampaging flesh? Had he ever felt his spirit dance and laugh with Rossini? Did he think she was physically locked inside herself with an immovable ball and chain?

Their eyes met and held.

Fleming, aware of an antagonism equal to his own, knew he would have to soften her defences if he were to make any headway with her at all.

"As housemother you've probably formed quite a close relationship with the boys. If they were troubled by anything they would come to you?"

She was not to be quickly mollified. "Housemothers function in orphanages and approved schools. Here, the housemaster's wife is referred to as Mrs. whatever it is. I came to stand in for Mrs. Hammond when she left. The boys call me Mrs. Robbins to my face and Mary Lou behind my back."

Fleming wondered if Mrs. Hammond were away permanently and, if so, why. It couldn't at this stage be asked.

He achieved a bleak smile. "A nickname can be a sign of affection."

"All the staff have nicknames. In my case it's to rhyme with a line of doggerel – not particularly affectionate."

Fleming stopped trying to win her. "So – if there was any trouble the boys would cope as best they could themselves."

She caught a glimpse of Brannigan's expression out of the corner of her eye and knew she had to stop hazarding her position. Truth was a luxury she couldn't afford.

She climbed down. "No – they'd bring their troubles to me – naturally – and I'd do my best to help. Are you trying to tell me that something was troubling David?"

He acknowledged the breach in her armour but felt that it had been made too quickly. Her antagonism had been honest. She had switched it off like a light.

"I think he might have been having nightmares. Would you have been aware of it if he had been?"

She looked at him blandly. "The dormitory is just down the corridor. I very rarely go out of an evening. Of course I would have been aware of it."

Fleming looked at the hi-fi equipment and the headphones. Through God knew how many decibels of a military march?

She understood what he was thinking. A good solid wall of sound was the one thing in this place that kept her sane.

She indicated a pile of books on a table near the window. "I'm researching nineteenth-century composers for a book I'm working on and my door is always ajar."'