A Great Day for the Deadly(36)

“I don’t think—”

Neila turned back to Gregor. “When I saw the utility room door open, I thought I was in luck. I’d thought I’d been wrong about missing the bell. The corridor being empty wasn’t so unusual, really. There’s a lot of work to do around here. It was Sister Hilga being gone that really made up my mind. So when I saw the door open, I thought Sister Hilga had just gone down to wash something up or to fetch a broom or a mop or something. And I could have my aspirin and I wouldn’t be in trouble.”

“What others who went tramping down to Mr. Donovan’s office?” Gregor asked her.

But Neila ignored him, as Donovan ignored him. “I got to the bottom of the stairs,” Neila said, “and it was then it hit me that the light in the utility room was off. Sister Hilga wouldn’t be standing around in there in the dark. Somebody must have gone in and then forgotten to close up. I was going to leave it and run to chapel the way I had been, but then I decided I couldn’t. I mean, I really do like kittens. If one of them had died it would have been my fault and I would have felt guilty for a week. So I thought it only made sense to close up before I came out.”

“Right,” Gregor said. “So you—”

“I went in and turned on the light,” Neila told him, “to make sure one of the kittens wasn’t already in there. I didn’t want to trap one.”

“Of course not,” Donovan said soothingly.

Neila went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The light switch is right inside the door, and when I got it on I was looking at the floor. That’s where the kittens would be likely to be. On the floor. They’re very small, the six we have now. So I was staring around at the linoleum for I don’t know how long before I saw it.”

“Saw what?” Gregor asked.

“Saw the leg,” Neila told him. “It was sticking straight up out of the sink. It was like a flag. It is like a flag. And then I went to the sink and looked down into it and there he was, Don Bollander from the bank, with his leg as stiff as a maypole and his face—his face—”

Neila blanched and looked away, at the snow-covered stones that paved the courtyard, at the bench she was sitting on.

“I’m very cold,” she said tearfully. “Suddenly I’m very cold. I want to go inside.”

“Of course, you can go inside,” Pete Donovan told her.

“I don’t want you,” Neila said. “I want somebody I can trust. I want somebody who isn’t making fun of me.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Pete Donovan said.

Gregor kneeled down against the bench next to where Neila was sitting and took her chin gently in his hand. The fainting episode had been shock, phase one, the immediate response. This was shock, phase two, the delayed one. He knew the signs all too well, the sudden pallor, the opaqueness of the eyes. The girl needed either the traditional sweet brandy or something more to the point, like a large glass of orange juice or a chocolate malt.

“Listen to me,” Gregor said. “I’m going to go look now at your utility room—you did say it was just inside that door you came out of?”

“Yes,” Neila said. “Yes, it is.”

“Fine. What I want you to do is to go and find Reverend Mother General. Go and find her right away. You can take Mr. Donovan with you.”

“I don’t want Mr. Donovan with me.”

“You should have someone. You really aren’t feeling well. It’s obvious. I don’t want you to get lost and faint again.”

“I won’t faint,” Neila Connelly said. “I never faint.”

“Mr. Donovan will make sure you don’t faint,” Gregor said. Then he stood up and turned to Pete Donovan, hovering over him like Thor in a temper.

“You can’t just go barging around the convent on your own,” Donovan said. “And you don’t understand—”

“I understand how to get to this utility room, unless she’s left out a book of map information. Go take her to Reverend Mother General.”

“But for Christ’s sake—”

Gregor didn’t even pretend to be listening any more. He turned his back to Donovan and Neila Connelly and went striding toward the door Neila had come out of, a twin of the door they had so recently come out of themselves when they ran into her. It’s not so complicated, Gregor thought. It just seems that way when you’re inside and being led around from one corridor to another. It’s basically just a square. If there really was a body—a corpse and not a sick man; a corpse and not a fantasy—he would have to get Reverend Mother General to give him a floor plan.